Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon (Wild)<\/p>\n
Politics.\u00a0\u00a0 Sigh. I feel bad for all those bright young things who worked their butts off for Obama and instead ended up with a President.\u00a0 To be political is to be cynical.\u00a0 All of us who move outside the coziness of home and into the political fray will confront a sobering realization:\u00a0 change is slow and change that isn’t usually wrecks something in the process.<\/p>\n
Not only that.\u00a0 The change that is possible at any given time has little to do with the righteousness of the cause, the clarity of the facts and the obvious path to a particular solution.\u00a0 The reason?\u00a0 All things happen within a context and nothing, let me repeat that, nothing transcends context.\u00a0 Consider early efforts against Jim Crow legislation.\u00a0 Look at the long protest against the Vietnam War.\u00a0 The twisty, tortuous path of health care reform.\u00a0 Political financing.\u00a0 Matters related to a woman’s right to choose an abortion.<\/p>\n
Climate change is the issue of the current moment that I would nominate as most likely to transcend.\u00a0 Has it?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Lobbyists muddy the water with false research.\u00a0 A few loud conservative voices make it seem as if the questions are still in debate, when they are not.\u00a0 The long curve of climate change effects makes change now difficult.\u00a0 Not to mention health care reform is in the pipeline. We may fail on climate change because this mix of factors makes us dither until New York is underwater and the south a burnt over district.\u00a0 Time will tell.<\/p>\n
Why not give up then?\u00a0 If change is unpredictable, then why give any effort at all?\u00a0 So many people drop out because their first taste of politics or their first taste of issue advocacy ends in failure.\u00a0 Or, worse, ends in a success that does not produce the results imagined.<\/p>\n
Here are three reasons for staying on the ancientrail of political life.<\/p>\n
1. Change does happen.<\/strong> It may be slow and off point for a long time, but we no longer have slaves or Jim Crow laws.\u00a0 A woman’s right to choose an abortion has remained steady in spite of considerable agitation.\u00a0 Gays and lesbian can be married in several states now.\u00a0 The Vietnam war is over.\u00a0 If many activists had not stayed engaged, then none of these long term victories would have happened.<\/p>\n 2. To give up gives the victory away.<\/strong> If Martin Luther King and his generation of civil rights workers had decided the work had cost them too much, or the probability of success was too low, we would not have an African-American president or burgeoning African-American middle class.\u00a0 If the folks in the Sierra Club Northstar Chapter had backed off in their support of the Boundary Waters because the opposition was too strong, there would be motorboats now where thousands, hundreds of thousands canoe quietly.<\/p>\n 3. If not you, who?\u00a0 If not now, when?<\/strong> Politics is personal.\u00a0 We have, in a democratic society, a gift of political engagement that matters.\u00a0 It matters, though, only if you engage.\u00a0 This is a question of authenticity, of being the person you are and can be.\u00a0 At this level success or failure does not matter.\u00a0 What does matter is that you listened to\u00a0 your own heart; and when it said, here I stand, you stood up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon (Wild) Politics.\u00a0\u00a0 Sigh. I feel bad for all those bright young things who worked their butts off for Obama and instead ended up with a President.\u00a0 To be political is to be cynical.\u00a0 All of us who move outside the coziness of home and into the political fray will confront a sobering … Continue reading Political Action: It’s Personal.<\/span>