This fight is not a 50 yard dash. It is a marathon, and as we run it we must be building the road on which we run. It is a #@%&*##~~!@ hard job. I for one am tired. But I am not about to give up the game now. If we focus we cannot miss the cracks in the enemy's walls. We will win, in the end.
Meanwhile all around us things are in turmoil. There are attacks on every front. Congress is slashing and burning, taking no prisoners. The media and business make up lies and distort reality in support of some perversion of "survival of the fittest" social evolution theory. The mood of the country is grasping and paranoid. These are by no means easy times.
Whatever the results of the current turmoil, we can all be sure that the game will end up, in larger part, at the local level. We will only be building for our future when we build at the local level. The more we can anticipate this, the better off we will be.
Look at your community. Where can your folks, or if necessary, you alone, spread our message? Will your city council pass a resolution? Will the churches and civic groups in your area write a letter to your Congressman endorsing CASA? Will the media do a story about living in your own home? Will they do one questioning nursing homes? Pennsylvania ADAPT is no small example of what committed individuals can do; we can all take a lesson from them.
We need some middle game strategy, ideas and plans to build on to our existing strategies. A little variety to sustain us to the end of the battle. The tough part is we are inventing our own. But that is why it is so important to fight this battle at a number of different fronts, and with a variety of styles and tactics.
We need to be dreaming and scheming right about now. We need to be thinking up lots and lots of ways to be pushing our point so that if we meet resistance on one front, we can move around it with one of our multiple alternate plans!
The increasingly rapid growth of our movement must tell us of its importance, or we would not have so many seeking to join with us. Every day calls come in from individuals and groups around the nation who want to join our fight. We must take heart from this. We must reach out our hands, or legs, or minds, or reachers, or whatever the heck we have to reach with and pull this individuals and groups in. We must remember the importance of working together and not loose that thought.
So put your thinking caps on. Go outside under a nice shady tree, start chewing on a blade of grass, or sipping on a cool glass of tea, look up at those clouds lazing by overhead and start to dream up some new angles on this tangle we are in. Oh and while you are at it rest up for Atlanta! There is no battery recharge like the one we get from being together.