Lethargic

There are two issues that are top on my list for things that need changing. The Iraq War (let’s get the hell out of there) and global warming. As I walk through the city streets almost every day, rarely do I see anything being done by ordinary citizens on either of these two issues. How are things going to change if we don’t make them change?

I figured there would be a few possible avenues that I could help make some progress. First, in concert with someone else, I checked with my Chomsky book club basically asking the question, “Reading these books has given us a better understanding of the world. Wouldn’t it be great, since we are already a group, to do something about these things as a group?”

It was decided that people didn’t want to do anything as a group. We’ll just keep reading about what is wrong with the world. Granted, certain individuals are certainly doing things outside of the group to right the wrongs that they see. Anyway, that disappointed me, but I decided to explore other possibilities for action.

Before I continue, I should point out that there are organizations that work for change. But there are some major problems that I have with organizations like the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and World Can’t Wait. First of all, the events aren’t nearly frequent enough. Secondly, they are generally always in the same place all the time (5th and Market). How can you have an affect on a large number of people if you are always in one place? The same people will see you every time. Also, specific to A.N.S.W.E.R., they don’t focus. They want to get us out of Iraq and free Mumia and something about the Cuban five and and and… Having said this, I am currently trying to join up with one or both of those groups. We’ll see how that goes.

I think it would be good to form some local, smaller organizations which both do their own thing and join with larger organizations for select events. So I went ahead and made two posts on Craigslist. One was for The Russian Hill Out of Iraq Group. The second was for The Russian Hill Global Warming Group. And you wouldn’t believe how few responses I got. Zero. Zero responses. You know people are looking at these group listings. I guess they’d rather join the Gay Scrabble Club (seriously, I saw a posting for this) than actually do something about what is wrong with the world.

OK, so maybe some people had a different idea about how to approach problems than I did. Fair enough. So I put myself on the other side of the Craigslist posting and responded to one that wanted to meet with other people to explore how to do something about the problems that this person saw in the world. It was more of a general group, and it wasn’t neighborhood-specific, but I figured I would give it a shot. I responded, as did two other people. Four people is better than one, at least. Well the group creator emailed all of us with some ideas on how to meet up. I responded, with three days passed I have not heard from the other two people nor have I heard again from the group creator.

Maybe Lee Iacocca was right. Maybe Rich was right. People do need to be more outraged. If people just took one night per week to do something about the problems that they saw in the world, rather than watching TV or going to a basketball game or “getting their drink on,” I think a lot of people would live in a much better place. Seriously, 20,000 people regularly meet in the same place at the same time to watch a basketball game for $20-$200 but we can’t get four people together for an hour to do something about the world, all for the price of bus fare and a cup of coffee?

Now don’t get me wrong. I could certainly do more. A lot more. And my ideas about what is not being done correctly to make change are likely to be out of whack. But I have found that most people don’t want to even open their mouths let alone get their hands dirty.

And like Lee Iacocca, I am mad as hell. If I can’t find other people to join up with that want to do something about the problems in the world, I will find out what I can do on my own, not just in terms of changing my personal lifestyle (war tax resistance, buying local, among many, many other things) but also in terms of changing the behaviors of other people. As liberal as I might be, I often have the very Ayn-Rand-ish viewpoint that I’m not going to wait around for others to let me do what needs to be done.