“What good will that do?” I’ve had people ask me when I tell them to pick up the phone, at least make a token effort to improve the future—to ensure that there will be one—to keep our country and the world viable. The fact that so many educated, financially stable people simply forgot that democracy is supposed to be participatory astonishes me.
Robert Naiman, policy director for Just Foreign Policy, writes at ocmmondreams:
“In the set of people in the United States – particularly on the ‘left’ – who say they care about stopping wars, too much political space has been occupied by people who run down engagement with Congress. That’s a key reason that this moment should be fixed in public memory. More than anything else, engagement with Congress stopped the bombing. So, the next time someone asks you to engage Congress against war, and some anti-political engagement loudmouth runs that down, remember this moment. It wasn’t anti-political engagement loudmouths who stopped the war. It was people who engaged Congress.”