If I Was Going To Start A Movement…

If I was going to start a movement, maybe toward the eventual goal of creating a party that would put the needs of the “average American” first, this is what I’d say…

Are You Like Us?

If you’re like us, you’re tired. You’re frustrated. You’re angry. You’re afraid. Perhaps you feel like there’s little or no hope of a decent tomorrow for yourself, let alone a brighter future for your children. The challenges we face – including, but hardly limited to, the SARS2 pandemic, climate change, the rise of fascism and religious extremism, gun violence, pollution, and so on – seem insurmountable.

Perhaps you vent your rage on social media or among your friends; perhaps you bottle it up inside yourself. You feel like your voice doesn’t matter, that the powers that be don’t hear, won’t listen, and don’t care. Perhaps you’ve voted in good faith, perhaps you’ve gone through proverbial Hell to cast your ballot, and like us have watched with dismay as the needful things have not been done, that we’ve been lied to and gaslit by those we put in power. Or perhaps you’ve refused to vote for “the lesser of two evils,” refusing to participate in a game that you feel – rightly so –  has been rigged from the start.

We can no longer look to our elected leaders or institutions, if we ever could: the democratic system has failed us, with every party looking out for itself. The political elite focus on enriching themselves while catering to their wealthy donors and corporations, ignoring the needs of “we, the people” while endlessly and shamelessly spamming us with campaign donation requests. We see politicians commit crimes in plain sight, visiting outrages of every description upon our democracy and our people, yet there is no accountability. Some would say our system is broken; others would say it is functioning as designed, to serve the rich and powerful. Regardless, it does not serve us, the people.

The media is complicit: with all the major outlets controlled by billionaires with their own agendas and independent news organizations struggling to survive, the Fourth Estate has failed us and thrown in their lot with those who would rule. The talking heads tell us what their masters want us to hear, deflecting us from the truth, gaslighting, “both-sidesing” everything, or telling outright lies. Again, with zero accountability.

We see racism and bigotry not only undiminished, but rapidly on the rise. Black Americans and Native Americans have suffered brutality for centuries, longer than our nation has existed, with the white patriarchy fervently trying to reverse the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement even as it seeks to destroy the fundamental right of women to have control over their own bodies and equal stature in our society. We stand on the precipice of an abyss that is not just a rollback to a horrific past, but a leap into an even more horrific future, the dystopia compounded by the aforementioned nightmares of a global pandemic that is far from over and the effects of climate change that will become progressively worse, and may soon become irreversible.

And we are running out of time. We have perhaps two years remaining before we lose any chance at democracy for generations, and perhaps forever. We have, at the outside, twenty years left to contain the effects of climate change before we have no hope of reversing Mother Nature’s well-earned wrath.

Hope

While the situation is truly dire, we believe there is hope, both for our generation and those to come after. We believe that we the people can solve the myriad problems that confront us, and that the struggle to create a better world is a battle worth fighting. But we only stand a chance if we unite, if we can speak and act in numbers that cannot be ignored by those who currently control our fate.

If you feel alone, ignored, or powerless, remember that individual drops of rain combine to form the mightiest of rivers that have transformed the face of our world. Perhaps that sounds too poetic, too impossible. Yet it is nonetheless true. You are not alone. There are many who feel just as you do. We are, in fact, the majority.

We Are A Movement

This a movement, not an organization or a party (at least, not yet). We are a collection of people who share a set of ideals and beliefs and determination to work together to right the wrongs of our society and try to save our planet and ourselves.

Is this a monumental task? Of course it is. But if not us, then who? There is literally no one else coming to save us. We either save ourselves through unity and common purpose or we perish, both as a functional society and as a species. Those are our only options; anything else is hopium and fool’s gold.

We do not want your money. We want your time, your talent, your determination, your passion, and your commitment to act. Our mission is to empower people through action by helping you find ways to use your unique combination of skills, talent, resources, and time to join in the task of saving our society and our world. Many of us simply didn’t know where to start, didn’t have a place to come together, which is why we started this.

Core Beliefs

We are human, and none of us are perfect, but our movement is not based on planks of a political platform. Rather, we share a general set of ideals and beliefs founded on a set of basic principles that act as a guide for determining our courses of action:

  • True equality for every human being;
  • The fundamental right of all people to be their true selves;
  • The fundamental right of women’s sovereignty over their own bodies;
  • Personal liberty balanced with civic responsibility;
  • Freedom of religion with freedom from religion.

What Can You Do?

We’ve talked enough. We’ve voted enough. We’ve given enough money to causes that have brought us to our current dystopian reality.

It is time to act…

This Post Has 7 Comments

  1. Tina Sheppard

    I’m in. Don’t know about talent – but I can bring the rest. I just sit here not know what exactly to do.

    I don’t know that your average American, busy busting their butts to try and get by, knows exactly what’s going on. When I try to talk to people, they either don’t know what I’m talking about and accuse me of being hyperbolic or they falsely believe that just because we live in a blue state (CA) we’ll be safe.

    I would love to be part of organizing to save our democracy – I can’t take living in or leaving my children a fascist America.

    Thank you for writing this. Let’s go.

    1. Michael R. Hicks

      That’s exactly how I feel. I don’t know squat about political organizing, but if we can get at least a few people together, we can make more of a difference, even if just a tiny one, than just screaming into the ether every day! I’ll start hammering a site together and we’ll see what happens…

  2. Dorthy

    In the infamous words of flight 93:
    LET’S ROLL!

    1. Michael R. Hicks

      Will start working on a web site this weekend/next week so we can have a place to start sorting things out…

  3. Jim Gallagher

    I have been saying for years that the United States needs to have at least 5 political parties in congress to avoid what has happened after 200 years. The country is evenly divided, and nothing is getting done to solve any problems. More parties means that 3 fifths of congress would have to agree on something, and they aren’t going to do that unless it’s helpful to them all.

    1. Michael R. Hicks

      You’re not wrong. And this is why infrastructure passed, but none of the other critical legislation – especially voting rights – has. A lot of the rich will get richer off the money that will be poured into infrastructure, and that’s something both parties can get behind (like our outrageous defense budget). I suspect, like the PPP loans, there will be little oversight of the infrastructure funding and much/most of the money will just disappear.

  4. Dwayne Key

    America First is top priority for me. All those involved in fixing and cheating in the elections need to be brought to justice, Democratics and Republicans. We need a Patriot Party that’s for America, the Republic. Those involved in Human Trafficking, Pedos, Drugs, and other evil things need to be brought to justice. We need to go back to the 1776 constitution. The Act of 1871 needs to be abolished for its was never ratified by the states. It’s where the USA became a corporation and we are the slaves.

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