Here are more actions you can take now, and people you can appreciate and support:
1. A 60 Year Legacy of Heroes
Lateefah Simon is my Representative.
She recently succeeded her mentor Barbara Lee, who stepped down after 26 years representing Congressional District 12.
Barbara Lee, in turn, was mentored by the great Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). Her motto was ‘Unbought and Unbossed‘.
2. Elevate your CQ (Citizen Quotient)
- Watch Shirley Chisholm’s biopic Shirley
- Start, or continue making, three calls to your three federal representatives every morning Monday – Thursday. Earlier is better to be able to talk to a staffer or leave a voice mail. Use 5calls.org and if you’re lost for a topic, just quote Senator Angus King of Maine:
“This a constitutional crisis, and we’ve got to respond to it. I’m just waiting for this whole body to stand up and say no, no, we don’t do it this way. We do things constitutionally. We’ve got to wake up, protect this institution, but much more importantly protect the people of the United States of America.”
3. Spend time with your communities
Here are some fascinating ideas about spending time with other people; from Derek Thompson essay ‘The Anti-Social Century’ in The Atlantic.
“Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America…Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period…going back to 1965…(but) solitude and loneliness are not one and the same. ‘It is actually a very healthy emotional response to feel some loneliness,’ the NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg told me. ‘That cue is the thing that pushes you off the couch and into face-to-face interaction.’ The real problem here, the nature of America’s social crisis, is that most Americans don’t seem to be reacting to the biological cue to spend more time with other people. Their solitude levels are surging while many measures of loneliness are actually flat or dropping.”