Blogging and emailing isn't enough for me
I love politics. It's interesting, it's complicated, it's vast, and it's impactful.
I love hearing new perspectives, arguing with people, sharing my ideas, and advocating for policies.
I blog a lot. I send some emails to my representatives, at the city-level, state-level, and nationally. I speak occasionally at local government meetings.
I've been involved in small-scale organized volunteer labor (planning pride fests), organized activism (canvassing, meetings, propaganda campaigns, letter writing), and occasionally am covered in the news or have a Letter to the Editor published.
And these things don't feel like enough either.
I'm jealous of folks who found a large platform, who's perspectives and opinions are influential on a large scale.
I want to give speeches to the nation and use flowery bullshit language sometimes(though also mean it).
I want my message to be heard by lots of people. I want to share my wisdom.
I want to share the fruits of all this thoughtful reflection I've done, with the help of therapists, friends, family, and sometimes strangers.
Also, I see these fucking people and I just think I could do such a better job. Sometimes that I'd be better spoken, sometimes that I'd have a better perspective, sometimes that I'd have better policy.
And recently I heard about some bloke (forget who) that was quite influential with his words, and I got to thinking: How do I do that?
And it seems a common path is through institutions. Political parties, corporations, news rooms, school boards, book publishers, etc.
I often think about running for office. Previously, I had city council aspirations, but there's such a big part of me that wants to go state or national these days.
Leftists have been erased from public discourse, or haven't ever really been represented, I don't think.
Some 33% of people never vote.
I talk to conservative and liberal and leftist people who feel like there's political corruption, that our democracy is too influenced by money, that corporations do terrible things all the time, that the rich aren't held accountable, that health care is way too expensive, and that tax money isn't spent right.
If we get to specifics on those, there's a lot of disagreement, but a lot of common ground too.
In truth, our neighbors are more closely aligned with us than anybody. We are governed by the same city, same state, and same fed. We live with the same crime rate, same local businesses, same streets, same schools.
The idea that we are opposed to eachother is nonsense. We are on the same team, and our opponent is the politicians who should be representing us.
No matter how good (or bad) a job they are doing, we (myself and my neighbors) should hold them accountable & scrutinize them.