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Take Action:
What freedoms would we have if nobody ever stood up for their rights? Here are several ways in which you can make a positive impact.Index:
Contact your elected representatives.Contact the media.
And definitely vote.
Contents:
1. Read. Learn about our rights. Learn about their history. Learn about the personal courage and the determined cooperation that have always been needed, generation after generation, in order to protect them.return to index
2. Ask questions. Ask questions of our librarians. Ask questions of our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, our teachers, and the people in our classes and in our workplaces and in the line with us at the supermarket.
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3. Listen. Listen with deep respect to the ideas of people who seem to think that they do not know as much as we do. Listen with careful attention to people who act as though they have all the answers, but who seem to be leaving out important information when they tell us their conclusions or when they speak disrespectfully about what others have said.
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4. Speak. Be ready to say, "I need to know more about the sources of your information. I need to know more about how you came to that conclusion. I need to know more about why you said that." When you are ready to talk about your own experiences and thoughts, consider answering these questions without being asked: What are the sources of your information? How did you come to your conclusion? Why are you saying what you are saying?
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5. Write. As often as we choose, we can write a note -- even one sentence -- to a newspaper reporter or columnist who has moved us or informed us or inspired us, and send it by e-mail, with a copy to the newspaper editor. Each of us can write Letters to the Editor, and letters to our Senators and Representatives, as often as we choose: current, respectful, short (no more than 150 words for a Letter to the Editor), positive, saying what we understand, telling what supports our conclusion, identifying what we think needs to be done.
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6. Think. Think about what’s missing from what we’ve just heard or read. Think about what just doesn’t make sense. Think about what helps. Think about ways we can learn more, understand more, and become more effective at doing what needs to be done so that we can work together at the task of protecting our rights. Think about whether or not we agree with the idea that Benjamin Franklin expressed in 1759: "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." www.bard.edu
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7. Give. Give support -- by envelope mail, by e-mail, by phone, by your own face-to-face presence -- to the people we appreciate, the people we admire, the people who teach us, and the people who inspire us. Give support to our elected representatives, our potential leaders, our organizations, our friends, our companions.
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8. Care. Care about our values, our history, our future, our planet. Care about our elders, and about those who will come after us. Care about those who work hard and take risks for us, here at home and far away. Care about our cousins all over the world whose names we do not know, whose languages we do not speak, and who worship in ways that are unfamiliar to us.
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9. Pause.
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10. Start again.
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Note that these action items are extracted from one of our handouts (MS Word format).
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