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Freedom Action of the Week
Email List Archive
Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k
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Edited by Mary Lou Seymour. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this
and other lists, click to: http://www.free-market.net/features/lists/
----- Featured Action of the Week -----
Third Week of May, 2002 The Every Day Activist
Hi! I'm Mary Lou Seymour. Some of y'all may know me through my
Liberty Activists web site and newsletter, but some may not, so I'd
like to briefly introduce myself and let you know what I hope to
"get" out of doing this column.
First, I'd like to thank Tom Knapp for his flattering intro last week.
Tom has done a superlative job with the Freedom Action of the Week
column ... it's been one of the highpoints of MY week for the last
two years. Just knowing that there are others out there who care
enough about freedom to try and take action on a regular basis has
kept me going during these somewhat depressing times.
For many years, I believed that a free society could only come through
changing the "system." I spent years working in politics and community
organizations, working for candidates, lobbying the legislatures,
organizing protests, letter writing campaigns, petitions, etc. And
I'm not saying those years were misspent or wasted. I still believe
it IS possible to effect change through those traditional means,
and, we need to continue and expand those activities.
But even when we succeed, it's too often a fleeting change. And
Leviathan grows on, pricked a bit from time to time, but swallowing
more and more of our liberties every day ... and burning out the
activists who fight it.
As anyone who hasn't been living in a cave in the West Indies (lucky
devil) knows, the downward spiral to a police state has speeded
up considerably since Bloody Tuesday. For those of us who can't
"escape" to the West Indies, or set up a "gulch" here in the US,
we have only two options: give up and go along and hope we can lay
low under the government radar screen, or, use the time that's left
to us to continue -- to "agitate, educate, and organize," as Saul
Alinsky said. (Yes, old Saul was a lefty, but the tactical lessons of
"Rules for Radicals" are still the "Bible" for successful activism
-- in our case, the fight to change the culture of our world to one
that respects individualism and fights for freedom).
Lasting change only comes from the bottom up; in order for a system
to change on more than a fleeting basis, the culture that created
the system must change.
A big job, right? Change an entire culture? Of course it is! Too
big for any ONE person, or any one group. That's where all of us
"little guys" come in.
Today, let me share with you my thoughts on how to truly be a
"freedom activist," in your every day life ... not just around
election time, but every day. Not just when there is a new outrage to
fight, but every day. Not just when the Action of the Week arrives,
but every day.
Think of this like the folks who say a prayer every day. They don't
just pray on Sunday, they do it every day. Or folks who exercise
every day. It doesn't have to be a big prayer, or a lot of exercise,
or a big world-changing action, every day. It's the cumulative value
that counts.
Imagine if every one of us on this list decided to do one small
"action" for liberty every day. Imagine if each of us convinced our
immediate circle of friends to do the same. Imagine if we began to
spread the culture of freedom beyond our immediate circle, and into
our whole community.
Most of you may already be doing this...but you just haven't stopped
to realize that's what you're doing. Have any of you clipped a
newspaper article today and handed it to a friend? Or forwarded an
article to your friends on the net? Or helped a friend work through
a personal crisis, by sharing with them the way a "free individual"
would handle it?
So, for this week's action, I'd like all of you to sit down and
think, about what you've done this week so far to "spread the word
about liberty," and, for the next week, consciously decide to do one
small action to promote freedom each day. I'm a great "list maker"
myself, so I encourage you to "make a list" of everything YOU do.
You don't have to show it to anybody. It's just for you, so you
can keep track of how you're doing. As the weeks pass, we'll talk
more about how to "educate," how to use your ingrained skills as an
"every day activist" to move beyond "preaching to the choir," as well
as the nuts and bolts of how to "organize" actions in your community.
By this time next year, my dream is to have helped build a network
of thousands of "every day activists", living for liberty every day,
sharing their vision with others every day, changing "their world"
to embrace a culture of freedom.
I'm excited to have this opportunity to work with y'all through this
column, and, want to encourage you to share with me your thoughts,
your hopes, your dreams ... and your action ideas.
Til next week,
For Freedom!
Mary Lou
Freedom Action of the Week archive:
http://www.free-market.net/features/list-
archives/activism/maillist.html
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