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Monday, June 2, 2014

TIME TO USE 'WRITE-IN' CAMPAIGNS?

Thinking again about campaigning and ways to avoid going hat in hand to millionaires and billionaires. Also thinking about 1) the ambivalence (at best) many people have about real change. A lot of people are worried about what they MAY need to give up and 2) those of us who want real change but don't see a vigorous enough attempt to deal with the things coming down the pike directly towards us!
Allow me to ask the first set of people (you know who you are) this question: can you tell that, whether we want them to or not, things (with the climate first and last) will change, yea are changing before our very eyes? If you can't see it, refuse to acknowledge it or are preparing to be 'raptured' and, thus, don't care--then I ain't talking to you! Stick your heads back into the sand (or back up your hinder end) and stay there. But know this: having your heads stuck up your other end does put you in the most convenient position to kiss your a** goodbye, as the old poster from the 70s instructed!
To those who CAN tell and do know, let me ask you this: are you ready to do what needs doing NOW or will you palm it off on your children and/or grandkids? If you're a 'palmer', you also have no business as a free citizen of a democracy but need to go somewhere which will welcome docile subjects, because that's what you really are!
For those ready to act but still ambivalent: you want to do right by posterity, right? You say that's the most important thing to you? Well, pardners, now's the time to step up to the plate and walk the walk: support what looks most likely to ensure that posterity the best type of life we can leave them--and don't be sloppy about doing your 'homework' in checking that out!
Last but possibly most important, I speak to my fellows who are impatient with the pace of change: in the primaries last month, I wrote in my own name to be a committeeperson, just because. Then, lo and behold, I'm told I've won a spot!
I think, in those areas where progressives are 'shut out' by the apparatus of major parties, maybe encouraging 'write-in' campaigns might help. Either find people who we know to favor real, noticeable change or, if not, write our own names in and ask our friends to do so. We badly need, and I still hope for, an all-levels progressive tsunami this fall. Nor can we expect, and I for one feel we shouldn't solicit, large-scale donations but find out whatever we can do WITHOUT big money!!
I suspect not many of us, myself included, are ready to enter the goldfish bowls and/or snake pits that public life and governmental assemblies have become, but if we don't, how will they become any less of those things?
It really is up to us to do whatever we can. Even if we mostly lose, at least this is a start. We're rolling a snowball and time will tell how big it gets and how quickly. We can only do our own parts--so let's step up and do whatever we can right here, right now!

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