Meet Alan Grayson, my new exemplar of passion, as he wages what the
Wall Street Journal deems "a one-man war against contractor fraud in Iraq."
Mr. Grayson has filed dozens of lawsuits against Iraq contractors on behalf of corporate whistle-blowers. He won a huge victory last month when a federal jury in Virginia ordered a security firm called Custer Battles LLC to return $10 million in ill-gotten funds to the government. The ruling marked the first time an American firm was held responsible for financial improprieties in Iraq.
...
The False Claims Act that Mr. Grayson used in the Custer Battles case is a Civil War-era statute allowing whistle-blowers to sue contractors suspected of defrauding the government and then keep a chunk of any recovered money.
The article (which is excellent and should be read in full) details the stonewalling and setbacks the Bush administration's Justice Department has thrown in his way through technicalities that allow sealing of records. It also describes Grayson's refusal to give up as he continues quietly to work away at an issue that has caught his attention. Monetary awards perhaps will follow, and his personal pockets are deep. But in many ways, his attention to detail and his indefatigable pursuit of justice remind me of much of the work that goes on here at Daily Kos, day in and day out, with very little notice.
I think of it as quiet passion, as opposed to the quite thoroughly discussed and media attention-grabbing abilities to give voice to outrage - a talent that has its place no doubt, but that can overshadow toilers in the background, like ilona with her PTSD series, Street Kid's Medicare diaries, RubDMC's incredible and heart-breaking Iraq War Grief Daily Witness pieces. These too are works of passion - as defined as "boundless enthusiasm" - to pain-staking and time-consuming topics that span months of research. Just because they don't shout doesn't mean they're not important. And just because these writers are doing their thing in relative obscurity doesn't mean they're ineffective.
These are, in many ways, dark times; dark times call on the best in each of us to respond. We need to find our niches, the places where our interests, expertise and creativity combine to create long-lasting and sustainable passion. We need to honor those of who have found their feet in this shifting political landscape and who bring specialized information and activism back to the progressive community. Innovation, humor, artistic abilities, detailed analysis, dedicated investigation, techie expertise, snark, rants ... all of it makes us what we are and can be used to leverage change, however hopeless and infinitesimal that change can feel at times.
The danger of splintering along special interest lines is always there, of course, as we seek out our interests. Markos and Jerome have critiqued how this can work against the progressive movement as a whole, and they recount many a cautionary tale in Crashing the Gate. So I'd like to suggest that each of us, as we coalesce around our own passion, keep an eye on at least one other issue that fellow progressives are pursuing. If you're obsessed with paper-trail voting, take a few minutes a day and get up to speed on global warming. If you're tracking veterans benefits, do some homework on abortion rights as well. Cross-over pollination on issues can help us build a truly interlocking network of coordinated progressivism that will build the kind of future we want to live in.
There is no better place in the world to learn in detail about just about any political issue than Daily Kos, and perusing and honoring the work of the quiet and passionate here holds the promise of taking our informal, citizen think tank ideas out into the real world for a test drive. Read. Participate. Then activate, out in the political world, where we can make a difference.