Organizing for America

Starting Small

Let's Bring America Back

Back when I was in college, a random senior I didn’t know emailed me and said she wanted me to meet up with me. She told me she was at a sociology class on homelessness she was shopping and that I was taking. She said she was really drawn to what I had to say about my motivations for taking the class (the professor asked us to explain our motivations), and wanted to meet up with me to discuss social change social justice. I cautiously agreed and met up for dinner. I only expected to meet up with her, but when I arrived, she was there with two of her friends. I sat down and we started a conversation that really showed me how far I’ve come.

“Oh, those f-ing corporations, how they ruin everything!,” said one of her friends with such rage that I almost felt bad for those corporations.

Meanwhile, her other friend says, “When I travel, I’m embarrassed to be American, I hate how our country is set up, we’re so wasteful.”

At this point I felt like I was at a meeting of the Weather Underground and next someone was going to bring up plans to blow up something. Meanwhile, the girl who had invited me to dinner sat there, taking it in, and I could tell she was nowhere as angry as her friends. After her friends finished their dinners, she and I talked about the role of anger in change.

“Your friends are intense,” I told her.

“What do you mean?”  she replies.

“They’re just so angry, so very angry even though they themselves personally were still able to get to Stanford. I’ll be the first to say that Wal-Mart is evil, but why should I walk around pissed all the time when that accomplishes little?”

“Well, if you’re not angry, you don’t care, or you’ve grown used to it, and that’s just as bad,” she told me.

“I agree, we should be angry. But I don’t think we should become our anger. If we devote ourselves so much to the cause that we become the struggle, and that struggle is based on anger, then you’re martyring yourself for anger. One should struggle based on hope. Hope that things will be better than they are now. Living and dying for hope is much better and effective, I believe, than living and dying for anger. When you fight for/with/in hope, others will join you. When you fight for/with/in anger, no one will want to be like you.”

“But shouldn’t we be angry?” She then asked.

“Yes, a little anger is good, provided that anger sparks action guided and fueled by hope.”

Maybe this isn’t what one is supposed to write about in an appeal for money, but to me it marks a change in the last few years in myself. When I was younger I was pissed as hell at this world, and I hated life and its injustices. But I realized I wasn’t changing anyone’s mind with anger. Slowly but surely I’ve discovered the power of hope. I still come off as angry every so often, because frankly, I am angry. But at least I know now that as far actually changing the world is concerned, anger and despair will never be as effective as love and hope.

Over the years that I've formed my social consciousness I had given up on seeking change through the traditional electoral process. There simply wasn't anyone out there speaking about the battle in terms of coming together and working for change. It was always about "us vs. them" or about voting against someone bad. Barack Obama makes me believe that the system can work at bringing change. To see the son of an immigrant with a funny name (like myself) make it in America has been clearest example to me that the dream that is America has not died at the hands of those who have driven us into the darkness we have been in my short adult life. We can bring America back. The America my parents left their homeland to find. The America we've read about but haven't seen firsthand.

That said, I've set my own personal fundraising goal for the campaign, which you can see in the thermometer to the right. This amount of money is how much I've given personally so far to the campaign over the past year. I did it little by little, giving whenever I could.

Will you make a donation to help me reach my goal of having my donations matched? 

 Every little bit helps, be it $5, $10, $15, $20, or $25.

Thanks for reading this, and thank you for your time.

-Alex