Finding Ulysses

One of the great things about blogs that I forgot to mention in this morning’s reflections on the difference between newspapers and blogs is that blogs, unlike newspapers, don’t make a pretense of objectivity. This blog isn’t supposed to be objective, and that means that I can use it to promote activism in the causes that I believe in.

One of the causes that I believe in is the effort to end the Republican majority control of the House of Representatives. Oh, the Democrats aren’t perfect, but its plain to anyone with two eyes that the Republican grip on the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of our federal government all at the same time is taking the United States of America down a very dangerous path.

Why am I writing about this on a local blog dedicated to the Town of Ulysses? Well, the fact is that campaigns for the House of Representatives, while they deal with national and international issues, are run on the local level. The 24th district congressional campaign is being run here in Ulysses right now – if only through our apathy and inaction.

We in Trumansburg and Ulysses like to think of ourselves as a group of politically informed people. We like to think that, compared to the other communities around us, we’re pretty progressive. In a way, we are. The people of Trumansburg and Ulysses certainly have proved that we’re good at political progressive talk.

We complain to each other about the Bush White House, and the Republican Congress, and their policies. We even hold meetings to discuss and educate ourselves on the issues. That’s all good. That’s all necessary.

But do we act progressively? Some of us certainly do. There are a good number of people who participate in Back to Democracy, for example, who translate their progressive complaints into progressive action. No one can talk to these people and say that they’re not doing their part as American citizens. Kudos to them.

There are many others of us around here, however, for whom progressive idealism has so far been just a matter of talk. We complain about the government. We wonder how things got to be this bad. We ask ourselves why anyone won’t do anything about it… and then, we don’t do anything about it.

This afternoon, I’m challenging this second group of Ulysses progressives to take the jump from complaint into action, and to help in the effort to elect a Democrat to represent us in Congress, instead of the Republican representation our district has had for the last two decades.

I’m suggesting two concrete actions, and the first one is simple: Visit the DCCC and vote for Democrat Michael Arcuri’s campaign to receive additional support from the DCCC. A few little clicks and you’ll be all done with that.

The other action is more involved. It requires volunteering about an hour a week. So, before you take this action, you need to ask yourself whether having the Republicans control the government really bothers you, or not. If it bothers you enough for you to volunteer one hour a week, then sign up as a telephone volunteer with MoveOn to help them prepare for the heat of this year’s congressional campaign.

If the Republican government doesn’t bother you enough to get you to volunteer one hour a week, if the Iraq War and the torture of detainees, government wiretapping, Religious Right agenda, and all that just isn’t enough to get you to volunteer one hour per week until Election Day, well, there you have your answer about how things got to be so bad in America these days.