I'm not talking about writing letters or making phone calls - those things help, but it should be clear by now that everything we're trying to fight for and against is affected more than anything else by a flow of dollars.
I strongly suspect that in order to actually change the march toward a police state, individuals have to make the most impact they, personally, can on the finances of the companies we seem to accept have a large role in running our country.
So, whose products are you using? What do you buy? Ideally, I'd like to see some of us start paying attention to every penny that we spend and thinking "hm, that's $400 over the course of a year - do I need to be giving that company that much money?"
There are a lot of options out there. Here are a few interesting ones that many people can use:
Working Assets, a left-wing cell phone company, offers pretty good service. It's not what Cingular offers you - but that's because Cingular cut employee pay after merging with AT&T. I've got a 600 minute per month plan (free nights and weekends) for $50 a month. Some of that $50 is donated to local causes, and some of it to groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the ACLU.
I don't own a car. I work for a large software company, and I simply don't need one - it's faster for me to take the express bus than to sit in traffic on the way to work anyway. I get my groceries on my bicycle, and if I want to go a longer distance, I'll rent a car or take the train. I mentioned this in my last diary - it makes sense because it saves me several thousand dollars a year. I have encountered obstacles, and I have found solutions. This also gives me a real incentive to be involved in community and transit planning in Seattle - I have a vested interest in making sure there's good bus and rail service. More importantly, it's one less non-renewable resource to consume. As long as we're dependent on oil, we can't hope to really change foreign policy. If you have to have a car, there's always biodiesel, again, available in most major cities.
There are food co-ops in most major cities. Rather than being large, corporate monsters, their profits remain local, and they tend to work to purchase locally produced goods. If you don't have a co-op, there are big chains that are trying to make a difference environmentally - Whole Foods, for instance, has some stores powered by solar energy, and they're working toward eliminating all garbage from their stores, using composters and recycling, while being conscious of the packaging of what they purchase.
Consumer products - ten years ago, reading through a Whole Earth Catalog, I saw a list of things to look for when buying non-consumables. It included considering the environmental impact of the item's manufacture, how long it will last, what company made it and what they treat their workers like, and how far it had to travel to get to me. These are all things to think about, and so far, I've found locally produced, more sustainable options for everything except for computers - and even there, AMD, for instance, has committed to produce 30% less CO2 by 2007.
I commonly hear individuals telling me that an individual action has no impact on the Big Picture. But the fact is - it does. In fact, it's the only thing that has an impact on the Big Picture, and history backs us up on this. You can't change the Big Picture without many, many individuals changing. It seems to me that the type of shifts that actually change culture, rather than simply changing a few people for the length of an advertising campaign, are bottom-up. So, I ask - what are you doing to reduce your energy usage, to shift your purchasing to local, sustainable businesses who are interested in producing rather than playing at politics? What will you do after reading this?