Utah Phillips sez: Get Busy
Einar Einarsson Kvaran/GFDL
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If you're like me, you find solace and inspiration in the activist efforts of those who came before us. A fine example is the late great labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, and poet Utah Phillips, who sez:
"If you're listening to mass media, if you turn on the radio in the morning, you're going to get a catalog of everything that's gone wrong in the last twelve hours. If you sit in front of your computer and pull up all these blogs, you bury yourself in all that negativity ... I want you to turn all that off and walk down the street and try to do something useful, in a homeless shelter, in a peace movement, alternatives to going into the military, public schools."
Lesson for greenies: We live in a time of great opportunity.
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Utah Phillips also sez:
"If you and I can agree to do our share of the work of the world around us and if you and I can agree to take only what we need and put back what we can and if you and I agree to care for afflicted and if you and I can agree not to hurt anybody ... Then you and I can begin in a small way to create voluntary combinations between us and get the work of the world done without the boss and without the state."
Lesson for greenies: Trust yourself more than some "experts."
And Utah Phillips also sez:
"I walk the towns and I talk to people down at the street, There are too many good people doing too many good things to let myself be pessimistic. It's self-indulgence to wallow in your angst, for lack of a better word. Plug into your community. If you can't change it, if you can't make this place where you work and live better, then where can you? Just get busy."
As fellow folk singer Bob Dylan once crooned: "He not busy being born is busy dying."
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2. Be nice...until it's time to not be nice
Links for the Busy
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