all those emails!

As much as I support progressive politics and a variety of activist and non-Bush groups, I'm about sick of seeing all those emails in my inbox. The day after the Iowa primary I had several emails from the non-Kerry & Edwards factions talking about what it meant, what they were doing etc. I know that's SOP and it's good work on the part of their campaign team but goodness! Not just from one group but from several. I did read through them and I thought Kucinich's speech was well done - I hope he does better in NH.

However, the real kicker was the day after the state of the union address. Probably 50 emails from all these groups talking about this or that fact/point, why it's wrong, what we need to do, ect. I realize that's both the blessing & the curse of online activism but goodness! What I find distressing is the overwhelming amount of information - some of it identical - that's disseminated by all these groups. I also understand that pelting people with many different emails also provides them with lots of opportunities to act AND keeps the topic at the front on their mind but it's still overwhelming sometimes.

Because these groups all have their own agenda, there are an infinite number of opinions and suggestions on what should be done. How do you decide? I try to skim through most of the stuff I get but the amount of information is staggering. I suppose this is all part of it. Deciding what means the most to you and then really focusing on it. But what do you do when what's important (the people governing our country) is SO huge? It's almost impossible to pick one topic when they all seem not only vital but interrelated.

So here's where activism starts to break down. People see that there are so many problems, they feel overwhelmed, and they just give up trying at all. My feeling is because activist groups are often so desperate for help and so strident in their message that they just overkill stuff. Many of them are coming from such a negative, fear based place that they literally create that no one cares about their issue and no one will help them. They're also so afraid that nothing can be done that, literally, nothing can be done.

It would be an interesting exercise to build an acitivist group that wasn't based in a desperate fear that 'something bad will happen if we don't do X' but that built itself from a desire to choose differently, to create a higher path through activism. Fear is only as strong as the force feeding it and pushes back with only as much force as we push against it. So if we could find a way to bring together people who aren't afraid that something will happen but who have looked at the issue and decided that it doesn't serve them and they want to change it, how much different and more effective might that be? I've not been very clear on discussing this as the ideas behind it are somewhat difficult to transcribe into words. At any rate, it sounds interesting to me...