Sometimes I look at what Kshama Sawant has done with the minimum wage movement, and I really think that I ought to be doing something similar, running for local office, trying to push for change. But I’m honestly not sure what changes I would want badly enough to fight for with that passion / time / energy commitment.
Am ranting in another thread about the homework requirements for elementary school students — I care about that one, and I think it’s really hard to change that kind of thing because as people’s kids age out, the parents stop focusing on it, so bad patterns remain for a long time. But that’s just a single issue; doesn’t seem enough to build a political career on, even if that’s what I wanted to do.
I’d love to decouple public schools from property taxes, but I’d have no idea where to even start with that one. And, of course, I have books to write, classes to teach, children to raise….I dunno. But sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the wrong thing, in the wrong place.
Absolutely you should do it. You’d be a natural. Start the way you’ve started anything else–start talking about it with your friends, get a group together, sit down and talk to your state representative’s office, write op-eds, eventually put together petitions, meetings, etc. You don’t have to see the whole path ahead right now, you just have to see the next step, and that’s generating interest among a group of people. Property taxes is a state and local issue, so you want to talk to state legislators, not national legislators.
Aw, thanks for the encouragement. I’m definitely keeping it in mind, but I promised myself that I’d give myself at least 2-3 years to really try to focus on the writing-commercial-SF thing. After that, though…we’ll see.