Reply #9: I heard it and feel kinda bummed out [View All]

[BrotherBuzz]

I just listened to Martin Luther King's famous anti-Vietnam War talk on our Sunday morning alternative news program. The situation now is exactly the same as the one he described in great detail in that long talk. The country learned exactly nothing in the intervening forty years. Hard to be optimistic with that understanding.

I've been to three meetings in the past month about the war in Iraq. Those meetings were pretty well-attended, but I don't think we have developed an effective strategy to try to break through and reach the sleeping majority. That would require shock treatment.

Sure, there is the core of people who know what is going on and are already activated. Those are the people who only pay attention to alternative media such as Democracy Now and Pacifica Radio and radical websites. But that leaves a huge, passive group in the middle which has been well-conditioned since the late 70's to avoid participation in the political process. I encounter so many people like that every day. They have resigned themselves to passivity and just getting by day to day.

I'm in a funk and I want to know how to break this cycle. Dammit, MLK had a message and yet there are still people that choose to attack the messenger. Maybe I should just go rake my leaves and shut the fuck up.