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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 U.S., 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 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 the list 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 I 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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