100 Days, 10 Actions

The woman's march is asking us to perform 10 Actions in 100 days.  The first action is to create postcards to send to your national and state representatives.  On the Woman's March web page they provided two templates for printing postcards.  I modified the "professionally printed" template to use with some 4x6 blank postcards that I purchased through Amazon.  Unfortunately my Canon mx922 does not allow me to print two sides at once, the cards are just a bit too thick.   But they are great cards.

I printed out page one on one side of several cards, then put the same cards back into the print feeder (printed side up) to print out page 2.  Works like a charm.  This also lets me put a different page 1 on the cards.

They don't look that bad in the photo do they?

If you're wondering why a post card and more particularly why this post card, well, first sending letters is a problem because the government is still concerned that envelopes will contain anthrax so letters are delayed by as much as weeks.  Postcards go through almost right away.  And if you send your postcard to local offices, they are received even faster.  (Concerning emails, "Indivisible" [a group of former congressional aides] says, it would take 100,000 to make the same impact as just 10 postcards.)

The reason to use this front picture is to make it clear to our representatives that we are united.  As voters, we know that WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.  When our representatives see the "Hear Our Voice" logo 1 time, they will ignore it.  10 times they might ask their staff to pay attention.  100 times, they'll probably read each one.  1000 times, it will not matter who is financing their campaign, our representatives will know that if they want our vote they have to pay attention.  They will have to lead.

As Democrats we are not members of any organized political group (Will Rogers), but if we make it clear that just because we might individually disagree with one another on specific policies, that does not mean our representatives can ignore us.

One cannot lead Democrats by telling them which way to go.  Rather, it is figuring out those things we Democrats have in common and leading us to those common goals.  Democrats are independent thinkers who are open to discussion.  Not like Republicans who have never had an original thought and so are looking for someone to tell them how to live their lives.  Rush Limbaugh listeners pride themselves on being known as "ditto heads".  A Democrat would hide his face in shame.

It is now time to raise our voices, even if discordant -- maybe especially if discordant,  to let our representatives know that "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any more."  We need to demand that the Democratic Party leaders recognize that while "herding cats" is difficult that if they want to win and maintain their positions in the party or the legislature or even Congress, that they need to pay attention to our divergent problems and find solutions.  None of us are demanding "My way or the Highway" so they have a lot of latitude to seek compromise.  If they can't or won't take on this responsibility and lead, then we, as members of the Democratic Party, have the responsibility of finding someone who will.

This post is open for comment!  Please do!

To downloadthe modified template for the "Hear Our Voice" postcards click here.

Here is a different picture to place on the front of your post cards, click here.