Be An Activist |
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Please note: this site is under construction! Specifically the pages referred to with ** will link to this page as soon as they are completed. Meantime, feel free to work with these suggestions.
Be an Activist: From Audience Member to Empowered Actor
1. Be a helping hand. Organizations and events represented on this website can always use more people to carry out their events and their activities. These may range from everything to taking a leadership role in the group to assisting in organizing and promoting events, including "arrangements" (bringing and organizing refreshments, setting up tables and chairs, etc.) and publicity for events through your network of contacts. Things don't just "happen": people make them happen and this is where you come in as a bona fide "person." You may also be a member of a group that you could encourage as a group to join a coalition of groups needed to sustain an event or a project. Use the contact information that you'll find on this site or in local media. 2. Start something. Maybe you will think of some worthwhile activity that doesn't have a group organized, at least in your locality. If you are looking to form a local affilitate of some organization represented on the website,. use their contact us setting to inquire about this possibility. Or maybe you'd like to do something more "creative" like start a discussion group focussed on books, articles, films or other material indexed on the website. (www.democrats.com offers a "documentary of the month" series of films that you might obtain.) If you are a high school teacher or have an activist-minded student in school, you might look into forming a progressive club in the school and/or sponsor an essay contest for students the research for which could be accomplished largely through the website. Small prizes for winners will be offered through this website, as funds are available. 3. Put your money where your heart is. If you have funds to invest, why not consider "responsible investing" in firms and projects that do not pollute the environment, appropriate vital resources from the needs of people, etc.? For some information on firms that "should" (or "should not") be supported by your money, see http://www.krullandcompany.com/main.htm , and http://www.socialinvest.org/ 4. Sound off: express yourself in the public arena. Opinions do count as public opinion helps to develop public policy, whether that policy is progressive or regressive. You can help enhance the influence of progressive views by calling or writing to newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations. For a list of contacts for this, along with some suggestions for effective communication of this sort, go to our Sound off ** page. 5. Speak truth to power. The people who make the important policy decisions in your locality, state and nation pay attention to the views of their constituents, if for no other reason because they want themselves and/or their parties to be re-elected to their offices. Phone calls, letters, faxes, e-mails and personal appearances, by individuals or groups of them, will make a difference, especially if they are executed in an effective manner. For a list of contacts for public officials at all levels, local to national, go our Speak Truth to Power ** page. 6. Get involved in a political ncampaign. We often congratulate ourselves that we don't settle political controversies by the bullet but by the ballot box. While this is true, it is also true that too often the voting public does not in fact vote, because their apathy or because of the suppression of their votes, and if they do vote they do so with little understanding of the issues, even those affecting them personally. As a progressive, you can help to remedy this by supporting candidates for office who seem progressively inclined, and whom you can influence toward further progressivism. Elections, like the poor, "we have always with us," but even-numbered years like 2006 and 2008 are especially productive of many political campaigns, and the "sidelines" is just no place for progressives to sit. As campaigns progress, the candidates are not usually hard to find. This website is contacting all known candidates at the local and state elections for the 2006 elections and will add contacts for presidential candidates in 2008. You are urged to visit the Political campaigns ** page of this website, study the positions of different candidates, find out when and where they will be making personal appearances and contact them to offer your help----and also to speak truth to the power of their campaigns by asking for their positions on issues of progressive concern. 7. Be a website activist. The Sun State Activist is intended to be executed by activists as well as to be a tool of and for them. There is much work that will need to be done to develop the site into the instrument of progressive empowerment that it is designed to be. We need "newshawks" from around the state who will scour their local media and events billboards for information about upcoming events and organizational activities in their localities. We need specialists in the various topics of our progressive interest to lend their expertise in these areas for a deeper development of those special interests. Finally, and this is inevitable, we need funds to defray some of the substantial costs of developing and maintaining this website. For this purpose, please go to the Contribute** page. In the last analysis, The Sun State Activist is not a spectator sport but a "game" that we all can play, so please get into the action! The Sun State Activist will maintain a Who's Doing What and Where attachment to this page to which you are encouraged to submit your "news" of things that you and your associates are doing to promote progressive activism. Don't hide your little light, let it shine to encourage others. Write jerry@sunstateactivist.org with your "news." |