[CRNMC] What we can teach now...

[karinajoy]

Beautifully said, Charles!
Thank you.
Karina

On Nov 10, 2014, at 12:00 AM, Charles Cresson Wood wrote:

> “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. 
> 
> Hello community rights friends,
> 
> Yes, after this last victory on election day, it is true that we deserve a well-earned vacation. Let us rest briefly, but soon return to the work that must be done. I have been thinking about the Martin Luther King Jr. quote provided above. I believe we, the Community Rights Network of Mendocino County, now have some genuine credibility, some new “listening,” and some brief window for building a much larger grass-roots activist network here in Mendocino County. But we should not wait long, if indeed we are going to do this, lest the power of this moment be lost, lest our victory with Measure S be drowned out in the onslaught of the millions of propaganda messages coming from the mass media.
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> There is one message that we can teach now, and that THERE IS HOPE, that the average person like you and me can make a significant difference, and that grass-roots activism can actually bring about significant change. The corporations would have us think that we can do nothing, and that we must accept the established order. They are doing their best to redefine freedom and other core American values in ways that suit their commercial purposes. They would like us to believe that individualism is the ability to choose any of a large array of athletic shoes. We the people need to reclaim our own thinking so as to be able say the metaphorical equivalent of: “I’m not going to wear shoes.” They would like to have us believe that freedom means having enough money to select items from a menu at a Jack-in-the-Box fast food restaurant. We the people need take back our freedom so as to be able to say the metaphorical equivalent of: “I’m going to grow my own food.”
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> The propaganda machine would say that each of us are simply helpless and ineffectual consumers (not citizens -- consumers). The propaganda machine would prefer it if we were isolated apathetic disempowered people each watching our average of four hours of television a day. Let’s not fall prey to their Siren’s songs. 
> 
> Of greatest concern to me is the involvement with the younger segment of our adult population. The 18-29 age range has the lowest levels of voter registration of any segment in the adult American population. And they are also the ones that Mendocino County risks losing to the cities. They are our future, and now is the time to reengage especially with them (but hopefully with everybody else too), to co-create a new possibility for citizen-led community rights, for citizen-led environmental sustainability, and citizen-led social justice. CRNMC could lead the way here, if we have the will to step up to that role.
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