Do you receive Oregon PeaceWorks’ weekly email action alerts? If you don’t, you may want to consider signing up.  It’s a free OPW service that tips you off to a variety of citizen action opportunities through which you may be able to really make a difference. To sign up, simply address your email request to info@oregonpeaceworks.org.

How It Works

My partner Alice is fond of saying, “If we all do a little, nobody has to do too much.” I’m not sure whether that’s literally true, but the sentiment is undoubtedly correct. Most positive change does not come in dramatic, sudden shifts. Rather, it results from small consistent pressures brought again and again by many people over time.  Our email alerts are like the action half of the formula originated by the group 20/20. They ask members for 20 minutes and $20 a month. The 20 minutes is for taking action on alerts similar to ours. The $20 helps fund the organization.  (Of course OPW needs your dollars as well and welcomes donations of any size--you can donate directly through our website, www.oregonpeaceworks.org--but right now I’m writing about action.)

Each week we send 4-6 suggestions for immediate action on issues that OPW works on as well as forwarding additional requests for action from our progressive partner organizations. Responding to each action suggestion requires only a few minutes. Here, for example, are this week’s OPW alerts:

· Unity Call to the Anti-War Movement (opposition to the Iraq War)

· Preserving the Filibuster

· No New Nukes (defeating the nuclear bunker buster)

· Final Chance for Public Comments on New Nuclear Rocket (opposition to nuclear-fueled space missions).

Most Change Comes Slowly

Some of us feel that if we can’t move the Bush administration with a single huge shove, we might as well not do anything. Let me comment that in my four decades of public interest work, the number of issues on which I’ve seen huge victories that change the status quo in a single sweep can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. And even those were the result of enormous long-term efforts that just happened to come to a head in a particularly dramatic way. For the most part, it does not work that way. Gandhi told us that when we seek social change we can expect first to be ignored, then ridiculed, then subjected to anger and repression, and finally to achieve acceptance. He was a strong advocate for consistent, unremitting pressure over time.

OPW’s action alerts are a great way to get in the habit of applying that pressure.

Don’t Forget to Thank the Good Guys

And while we’re at it, it’s also important to thank the public servants who do work that we like.  One such is Dennis Kucinich who, after his run for the presidency last year was ignored by the media, returned to his Ohio congressional seat and continues to work persistently on many great efforts.  A few examples:

· With Congressman Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), he is working on legislation to establish a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Writing in USA Today on May 16^th they said, “The troops have done their job. It’s up to Congress and the president to forge a policy worthy of their sacrifices.”

· He publicly told Democrats that the party’s failure to challenge the war in 2002 and 2004 led to its defeat, “Because we did not challenge the central vulnerability of the administration that led this country into war, into a war based on lies and misrepresentations.”

· He has spoken repeatedly against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) on the floor of the House.

· He announced legislation, H.R. 2420--which has 28 co-sponsors so far, to counter space-based weapons programs. For more information on this legislation, visit Kucinich’s website at http://www.kucinich.us.

As the civil rights song “Carry It On” says,

There’s a man by my side walkin’,

There’s a voice within me talkin’,

There’s a word that’s needin’ sayin’,

Carry it on. Carry it on.