<<<Focus on doing things where you can effect
positive change. You will be satisfied by your effort and in a big way
change the world for the better. >>>
I just got back a little while ago from an Amnesty International action at Barnes & Noble. Every year at this time (Dec. 10 is Human Rights Day) my local AI group joins with other groups from all over the world to organize the sending of cards of support to a select group of prisoners from all over the world who have been imprisoned sometimes for decades for their beliefs, ethnicity, religion. None have had a fair trial, most have been brutally tortured, many are ill.
It's true that the cells or cages these unfortunates are being tormented in are not in our back yard.
But every year after this action, more than half of them are released, because even oppressive regimes are embarrassed at the attention of the world to their crimes.
That changes the world for the better.
My AI group has been responsible for getting more "Prisoners of Conscience" released than any other US group. A Korean prisoner whose case we and a group from the Netherlands worked on (publicized) was in New York last week after his release, and several members of my group went into the city at his request to meet him. He will come here to thank the group personally next year.
I am "satisfied with [my] effort." I could hardly be more satisfied. I get to look into the face of an innocent man whose life I helped to save.
I don't care if he's Korean. Or Chinese. Or Mexican. Or Guatemalan. Or Turkish.
(You would weep to read the letters from a Turkish journalist I worked to get released. I have pictures of his wedding. I have a tablecloth sent to me in gratitude by his sister. On his son's second birthday, he phoned me, and although his English is poor, I understood what he was telling me with the call, and "Today my boy two year old." The arrangement we have is that the money I sent to him, when he was released, will be paid back by helping someone else, who will repay him by helping some other person.)
Joe, you may believe that I am as satisfied by my ways of trying to make the world a better place as you are by yours. I think it is inappropriate of you to lecture others on how to "effect postive change." We are grownups here. |
