You are just a citizen who has little power. Realize that. But don’t let it get you down. By realizing that you do not possess the power to end world hunger, bring peace to the world, and institute justice in the world you will become more powerful than ever.
You cannot stop a war. You cannot stop the next war from happening. You cannot stop global warming. You cannot stop our addiction to oil. You cannot stop the FBI, NSA, or CIA from violating your civil liberties here or abroad. You cannot raise people out of poverty. You cannot bring health care to all people in America. You cannot ensure that everyone in this nation gets to vote or will vote for that matter. However...
...You can think small. You can think on a micro level. In doing that, you are doing all of us Americans a favor. You in effect are helping us overcome our biggest obstacles.
You can sit at home and write letters to friends and families who can write their friends and family. You can make phone calls to one another. You can send emails to one another. You can educate them on instances of injustice and events that they need to know about. You can meet and have a cup of coffee in the most corporate place in America yet spend the time talking about things that matter.
If you are a student, you can do even more. You can organize at your school and form coalitions with student groups in your area. You can talk to people in your area who are notable people and have them speak at events that you hold to defend our nation’s freedom and speak out against the status quo in this nation. You can plan weeks of action and involve the media through alternative news networks like OpEdNews or even news networks that are mainstream like NBC or your local newspapers.
You can join local groups and organizations in your community or immediate area that talk about political issues weekly or monthly and organize actions for change in America. You can get those groups to connect with people in your community who are not connected. You can make these groups grow and you can make awareness in your community swell to a level where the establishment including the police cannot fight you because if you are arrested, people will raise money and will fight your legal battle for freedom with you.
You as an individual no matter what age can stand on the street with a sign and flyers and stop people on the street. You can ask people to have a brief important conversation on the situation in America. You can ask them for money to support hearings and events for people who are victims of injustice or for raising awareness on key political issues.
You can link up with organizations throughout your state. You can make plans to stand up against corporations who are abridging our freedoms and violating justice and ideas of environmental justice and social responsibility. You can take action and protest against them or just not shop or use these corporations services anymore.
You and others in your immediate surroundings can talk about your vision for America and formulate an agenda. You can then write petitions and go to your congressman’s doorstep, senator’s doorstep, or state representative’s doorstep to request that they do something to support your vision of America. You can detail specific actions such as defunding the war, fighting a future war with Iran, or impeaching Cheney then Bush. You can ask these elected leaders to stick up for you and support the American Freedom Campaign agenda which will most likely resemble your agenda for a better America.
You, yourself, can do a lot more if you don’t think that you have to do it all. In fact, it isn’t up to you to save this nation. It is up to us all. And you need to convince me, your friends, your family, your co-workers, etc. every single day that if we aren’t acting or paying attention, we are letting the powers that be hold their prized power over us for one more day.
By not being a unified force that is linked through community and who is working to get the people who do not act involved, we allow for the establishment (police, elected officials, lawyers, lobbyists, corporations, etc.) to divide us. They polarize us as a people and take advantage of it by using key words to trigger off signals in our brains.
A change in America starts with the people and trickles from the lower levels up. Change defiest gravity.
As states see cities rising for freedom, states will act and pay attention to the people. As states rise for freedom, people in Washington will take notice. And as officials who work in Washington take notice, people will start thinking about job security, elections, money, and power.
And as long as you keep speaking out, organizing, communicating, assembling, and using instances of injustice to propel ideas of freedom forward and keep spreading awareness on political issues and continue to have discussion on visions for a better America, we Americans will make people in power listen to us because we threaten their job security, elections, money, and power.
As a result of actions on a micro level, we affect life on a macro level and can have a world where we reject war as an instrument of policy, uphold civil liberties and justice, fight poverty and hunger in an effective way, achieve health care for all, and solve the problems presented by global warming and a dependence on oil.
We take the puppets off the hands of the puppeteers empowering the people in power now and put the puppets on our hands and start making the puppets talk for us. We become the puppeteers, which is how it should be.
