Dictating Democracy

“Will Americans continue to prey upon one another, have commercial rivalries, and yet expect to dictate peace to the world?” - Gandhi
I’ve had a lifelong interest in peaceful protesting.
In junior high, I looked like a bonafide hippie.
In high school, I always wondered how I could help, but couldn’t find my way alongside all the other distractions that come along with being a teenage girl.
I’ve dropped the hippie garb for some classy fashion, but I kept the basic importance, I want the world to be a better place.
I’ve been a lifelong “Cause Head.”
I think we should think up a term to coin for what I do and people like me do. It needs to be something current and vogue to effectively convey who we are, all of us who want to peacefully change the world for the better.
We’re a new breed of activists. I’ve taken lessons from all the actions that spawned change in the past and adding some new tricks.
I protested in public many times, but now, the protesters can’t even agree on what to yell about. There are always ten different causes in one parade.
And honestly, I don’t think anybody in power is listening anymore. That maneuver has been tried and died. It does not have the media on its side. In the words of Joan of Arc, “an invasion of enemies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”
My parents worried in the post 9/11 environment that I’d end up on “some list, somewhere” and the government would come and snatch me up.
My mom attributed this to my connections with Amnesty International, among other NPO (non-profit organizations) that would like to see some changes.
I studied social interaction and structure. This is “The way in which society is organized into predictable relationships, patterns of social interaction (the way in which people respond to each other). These patterns etc, are to some extent independent of the particular individual, they exert a force which shapes behavior and identity” See http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/structur.html for some basics.
I forgot this has always been a much loved interest. My favorite interest is the world around me and the people who inhabit it. Thanks to my cancer, I’m spending some time getting to know the world.