Excellent entry! I feel the same way about 80% of the time...to be honest, I'm starting to think it's the current administration. I've never had this horrible feeling of fatalism before.

Frankly, I've gotten more involved in low-level, personal, letter-to-the-editor type of activism lately. Maybe it's just an experiment on my part, and I certainly can't point to any results.

However, I would pick (at the risk of conducting a reductio ad absurdam) out your comments about doing something despite it not making a difference. That's kind of the position I've settled into. What got me there was reading a very cogent piece in one of Derrick Bell's books in which he elaborates on the sentiment, using as a collective example all the African-Americans who stood up for themselves or others when the only likely outcome was punishment to a greater or lesser degree. And look where we are now with racial issues! Not much farther, in many ways, that's right. But we are a little father, and in a hundred years we'll be a little farther, I hope. It's especially hard to stay interested when the issues are so nuanced as they are these days. Discrimination is subtle, appearances are deceiving, and those who favor the status quo want you to do nothing, because that maintains their world. You don't have to march, and in your case, you'll do a great deal by just raising your son right, so that when he gets older and energetic and idealist, he will take to the streets and the boardrooms and the fields and shoot for the moon. But you should try to do something here and there, just to keep in practice.

Hey, Mike. I've felt the same kind of agitation you write about -- but reading your post made me up and write my Senators. Was that your secret goal all along? I felt a kind of draining despair as I clicked the "send" buttons on their websites and got their cheery automated "Thanks for your comment" message. But I wrote 'em, dammit. Here's what I said, for what it's worth:

Dear Senator ______,

I am writing to encourage you join Senator Robert Byrd in speaking out against President Bush's politicized rush to war against Iraq. Specifically, I call on you support Senator Byrd's efforts to have this week's Iraq vote delayed until after the November 5 elections.

I work a block from the World Trade Center site. I have a personal interest in keeping American cities safe from terrorism. But I do not believe the administration has made any kind of convincing case that war with Iraq will help decrease the risks of terrorism on American soil. The CIA memo recently uncovered in fact confirms that highly informed people agree that war with Iraq would increase the threat of domestic terrorism.

I call on you as my Senator to search your conscience and use your common sense. Join Senator Byrd. Please.

I've become even more galvanized in the past few days. I've been calling Senator Kerry's office so often I'm beginning to think they recognize me. I just feel that I have to try to send a message to our leaders that I vote and am incensed by their actions -- and I do still believe that the more people who do, the more we will be heard.

FYI I have heard several times from professional activist that e-mail and web related writings don't carry much weight in Washington. You have a far far greater impact if you spend the time to write in longhand (so they know it is not automated) a well reasoned, non-canned letter and spend the 37 cents to send it. Just passing it along. Keep up the good work!

Patrick, I'm not sure if that's true. Our friend Sarah DiJulio works for a political action consulting firm, and her area of expertise is online activism. She helps advocacy groups put together online campaigns. As I understand it, these email and/or fax campaigns can be quite effective in demonstrating a large bloc of support for a particular action.

Back in my SANE days, I read one organizer manual that advised: "Politicians often divide constituent letters into pro and con and then weigh the difference. So write letters on heavy paper." It took me a full minute to realize that they meant "weigh the difference" as in an actual scale, not as in using their judgment.

Actually, I don't thin the medium is important -- what's important is that they believe that you are actually one of their constituents, and that you vote.

Gosh, I'm sounding all politically active now, aren't I?

Update on the results of my letters -- Schumer (okay, Schumer's automated reply machine) sent me a blah-blah-blah note saying this might be the most important vote of his career and that he was taking it very seriously and appreciated hearing from his constiutuents -- you know, blah blah blah. I wrote him back and pointed out he never told me where he stood on the issue. Hilary never wrote back. And Senator Byrd, to whom I wrote saying he was my new hero, wrote back to say he'd received my note and if I was a West Virginian, he'd reply later in more detail.

So to get a reply, it helps to be a constituent. But that's no guarantee. And it also doesn't mitigate the likelihood of the contentless reply.

Bleah. But Byrd still is my hero. As is my rep Jerrold Nadler, who voted against the Bush measure and posted his reasons on his website -- http://www.house.gov/nadler/press/IraqAmend_100902.htm

I agree with the sense of fatalism and paralysis.

I agree that the shouting seems to be going unheard (although 23 Senators did vote agin' it, more than I expected).

But I also think, sometimes you have to stand up, not so much because you believe in the ultimate end, but because you respect yourself more when you do.

Sometimes the first shout is both the hardest, and ultimately the most fulfilling.

And if the vehicles of democracy we're being given aren't working... if the letters to Senators are met with an automated reply, and the rallies are dismissed as "vaguely reminiscent of the sixties," and the pamphlets blow off in the wind...

Can we develop new vehicles?

**That** would be an endeavor worthy of our creativity and passion.

Mike,

Your program says that my entry is too long, so I¡¦m submitting it in two parts. Liz thinks it¡¦s worth reading to the end ƒº

I had dinner with Ralph Nader back in the fall of 1978, when I was a sophomore at Wesleyan. It was a potluck dinner prior to his talk at the university. Many of us had, the previous fall, been involved in a 90 sit-in at the President's office, demanding divestiture from corporations doing business with South Africa (back when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia). Many of us had been among the 1414 members of the Clamshell Alliance arrested at the future site of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.

¡§Burn out¡¨ was always a concern for activists. We saw our friends come into the movement and then leave, and we often felt, back then, as you feel now. In fact, I remember hearing about a study that the average college activist was active for about 1.5 years, and then "burnt out.¡¨ I asked Mr. Nader about that question point blank: "Do you ever have mornings when you say to yourself, 'What's the use? Why bother? They are just too powerful and I'm not making a difference?' Do you ever have mornings when you just can't get out of bed?"

His reply to me was one that I will never forget: "Yes, I do have those mornings. Then I realize that this is exactly how Mobil, Exxon and Gulf want me to feel, and that's enough to get me out of bed and motivated to get to work."

I recently found my old omnibus college application essay, rummaging through old papers. It was the one about the teacher who was the greatest influence on me, which was general enough to use for any of the applications. In it, I wrote about my 7th grade teacher who inspired me to become an activist, back in 1971. I ended the essay about how I had changed from 12 to 18, though I still wanted to change the world. I closed with:

"However, if and when this influence ceases, I know that there will be another seventh-grader like me who will rebel against my actions, because I will have become what I was rebelling against."

I have kept the message of this essay, as I have kept the words of Mr. Nader, as a benchmark. Am I becoming what I was rebelling against? Am I giving in to apathy and despair?

Part two:

Two great teachers of mine, Annie Dillard and Murray Bookchin, both have used the descriptive term "anti-entropic;" Annie to describe art and literature, Murray to describe activism. They both know that things fall apart. Even if we are doomed to failure, it is our job to persevere, if only so it will take longer for everything to fall apart.

I find this world today to be exciting. I find the activists who run circles around me to be motivating. I listen to Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" on WBAI (on the webcast later in the day because I work) to be amazingly inspirational. I find my email boxes overwhelmed with information from other activists, and sometimes I feel overwhelmed by sheer volume of the emails, and the work entailed within them.

I go to meetings, I go to rallies, and I do what I can to be anti-entropic. Maybe I will make a difference, maybe not, but I will be damned if I'm going to let Exxon-Mobil (they have merged since Nader spoke to us), Gulf, Halliburton or Enron win by concession.

Pete Seeger wrote a song based on the words of Lisa Kalveledge, a German who came to America after the war, and who was arrested protesting at a napalm plant in 1967. She had learned her lesson from her youth in Germany. Â"At least,Â" she said, remembering the interrogation she endured when applying to come to America, Â"my children need be silent when they are asked, Â'where was your mother when?Â'Â"

This is my last benchmark. This is the mark of my legacy for my children, and my grandchildren. Mike, this is the mark of your legacy for Ben. Â"Where were you whenÂ...?Â"