Today I am not going to talk about what other political animals are doing, who is going to win what primary or any of that. Last night one of our own lost a child. Mariachi Mama’s son ended his life. He had problems that must have seemed unassailable and opted to leave this veil of tears. Go and give your support to her diary, if you have not already.
This sad event got the Dog thinking. There can be no doubt that we all know that coming here and slinging words is not enough for us to change the way things are in this country. Many of us work on campaigns, more give money to candidates and parties and all of us follow the process and its outcome obsessively. But that is not enough, the country is in trouble and it needs more than just our words and dollars and interest.
Our fellow citizens sleep in the streets, out in the weather and beg to get enough to eat. 17% of our fellow citizens are without any kind of healthcare, except emergency rooms. In 2006 11% of our households were in danger of hunger. For those that like numbers that is 33,000,000 of your fellow citizens went hungry sometime last year.
We are in a war that is bankrupting our country, with a burn rate of 12 billion dollars a month, is there any of us that think that 144 billion a year could not feed our fellow citizens? Or give them some kind of healthcare?
The world is warming, there is no doubt, outside the offices of companies that pollute or sell products that pollute, of this. The only question is how bad will it be? We need to take action on this very soon, as it is not a problem that happened all at once and will not be solved all at once. This, unlike terrorism, is an actual, factual, existential threat to our country, and our species.
I hear you saying, my fellow Kossacks, "Yeah, Dog, we know about these problems, but they are beyond our ability to effect, that is why we support candidate X". In some part you are right. We do have to keep working for the people that will address these issues, but there is more that needs to be done.
We must develop a new crop of progressive politicians. We must start now, with this community to build the experience and knowledge necessary to bring progressive majorities to the State and Federal government. We know that the Republican Party will never address the problems that are facing our country. They have shown that they have no will or desire to do anything but comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. So if there is to be change, it is up to us.
Here is the Dogs proposal; We, that is all 5000 or so daily diarists and commenter’s on Daily Kos, put our convictions where our words are. We begin to take this country back, through the political process. The Dog is asking you to get involved directly by running for School Board.
Yeah, I am serious, I want us all to run for our local School Board. Why you ask? I have a couple of reasons. First off it is an entry level political position. It does not require great resources; beyond effort and time, and it give those of us that have never held office a place to start. Second, it is a place that we can actually start to effect change, right away. School Boards chose text books. They directly influence the material that our children learn their world view from. This is way to assure our progressive future, by making sure our children have real science, real history in their class rooms.
If we could get even 1,000 of us elected this cycle, it would be the start of a revolutionary change. Is there any doubt that it would make a difference? We will be making a more direct move to fixing the problems of our country.
So, how about it, Kossacks? Will you make excuses? Will you let your fellow citizens suffer when you could make a difference? None of us are too young or too old to do this. None of us can truly rest easy while our fellow citizens are suffering. If you don’t like the abstract, then here is the concrete, will you let the child that Mariachi Mama lost be just one of many?
I make my commitment to you here, and now. I am going to run, who will come with me and change our country, no not just change, improve. Will you serve Kossacks?