You have 2 arrows in your quiver as a citizen

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

The first one is your vote. It's yours to do with as you please. You can deploy it has a reward or a rebuke, you can withhold it all together. You can be subversive to "send messages" by writing in the names of someone who was perhaps eliminated earlier. Your vote has the most power when it is used early when fewer people vote - primaries, off year elections, etc. Your vote has more power if you can use it as a magnet to attract more votes around it. People care about what you think if you vote. I know that the reason I get so many calls by so many organizations is that they know from the polls that I actually turn up, even if it is for the off-year special election for dog catcher.

I turned out in Virginia to vote for down-ticket Democrats even though we had a complete Blue Dog at the head of the ticket in Creigh Deeds, who made the idiotic mistake of trying to be more Republican than Democrat in his campaign.

I am so disgusted with the Democrats/Obama Administration for any number of things, but most especially for the way they have completely screwed up the healthcare reform mandate that was given to them overwhelmingly in 2008, that for the first time in my life, I am sitting here looking at my vote as though it were a toll token that takes me someplace I just don't want to be. I just don't know what to do with the damn thing. Of course this also does not take into account my almost heartbreakingly naive and sweet assumption that my vote actually does get counted the way I want it to in our opaque, hackable, provably inaccurate election machinery.

The second arrow in your quiver is your dollars - where you spend them and how you deploy them politically. People are on completely the right track when they say - don't like the banks? - use the credit unions.

I would go further and urge people not to participate in the stock market or at least go back to the old model before mutual funds where you personally selected the companies you invest in because you believe they have a good product and are responsible employers who don't plunder the company's assets for the benefit of a few at the top. I know there are Socially Responsible Funds - I might take a closer look at those. I'm sure they don't have anywhere near the same kind of returns as a company that employs 12 year olds in Third World countries and outsources American jobs, but that's a choice we all have to make. If there was a fund that specialized in American companies that kept their manufacturing in America, that would be something I also would be interested in.

In the meantime, quite ago while when my disgust with executive compensation was at its acme, I took all my IRAs and put them in treasuries and Government bond funds. I am very happy with that choice. The money is safe, and actually, some of my returns have been surprisingly good - the bond funds, not the money markets. I KNOW that I could get a higher return with equities, but I am taking a hiatus from a system that I think is broken and filled with horrific corruption that comes from the very top of many, many companies. This is me voting with my dollar to not participate in the corporatacracy and I might suffer some actual personal loss to buttress my viewpoint. Oh well.

There are fewer disposable dollars out there in the aggregate to spend. You can have a BIG impact by where you put those precious dollars.

[Tesha]

1. You also have your actions. (NT)

[11 Bravo]

2. Cheney and Palin.

Oops, I thought you meant real arrows. Never mind.

on edit: I meant to reply to the OP.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. Excellent point.

I was focussing on what are the 2 "things" that one posesses that you really have control and free will over and it came down to the vote and what you do with disposable dollars or investment dollars, which are shrinking for most. These are the cornorstones of what I would call "passive activism". It doesn't take that much effort to vote (hopefully) or to click a different choice in your 401K screen.

I'm wondering how bad things will have to actually get for Americans to transformn to "active" activism. Things will have to get really really bad before more of the complacent middle climbs out of their Lazy Boys to attend rallies, protests, etc. Things seem to be getting there faster than many realize.

The foreclosure and short sale statistics are going through the roof in many parts of the country and jobs are disappearing daily which will lead to more foreclosures, etc. etc. A "cram down" mortgage rescue bill would solve a lot of problems. Everyone says then the negative equity will swamp the banks. If the banks made bad loans, aren't they SUPPOSED to go under? Isn't that moral hazard? I would love to see a lot of these banks and their immoral, unethical leaders go down the tubes. Shouldn't some genius at the top be able to figure out some way to transfer the bad debt to the Bad Bank of the US? It's like these guys created nuclear rods and had no plan where to put the inevitable waste.

[Tesha]

6. I agree that "when" (or more-precisely, "after what stmulus?") is the interesting question! (NT)

[laughingliberal]

10. I think passive resistance can be quite effective if enough people participate

Thanks for a great post.

[druidity33]

3. K&R

if only because you used an archery metaphor. I love those!

:)

[frog92969]

4. Where's my Robin Hood outfit?

K&R for NOT investing in slave labor.

[jotsy]

7. Good arrows that remain in our possession, even when we use them, so do so often!

The age of means over merit will not be dismantled unless and until virtue is viewed as having value instead of being considered a vulnerability.

Edited for lack of coffee! A vast difference between position and possession, but don't seem to know that this morning.

[Blue_Tires]

8. excellent points...

where in VA do you live? (you may have told me already)

[troubledamerican]

9. 3rd Quiver = General Strike* (*only valid in participating nations with strong labor unions)

Without a middle class, there is no democracy.

Without unions, there is no middle class.