Getting Political

Merry Christmas(or Xmas), Happy Hanukkah, Festivus, Kwanzaa, or whatever you celebrate! I'm sure you are all spending time with your family and friends and not reading this post. Nonetheless, I did not want to miss doing my weekly post on green politics.

I'm sure most of you do the individual things to be green; recycle, walk instead of driving short distances, turn off the lights, etc. For those who want to do more here is a list of ways to get political. I'm lazy myself, so I've organized them from easy to hard.

The easy ways:

1. Contact your Senator and tell him or her what green initiatives you support. You can find contact information here: Senate.gov
2. Ditto with your Congressperson (and state and local reps). Contact info: House.gov
3. Check out Change.gov. This is the Obama transition team's official site and will be the public point of contact for the new administration. Here you can read blog posts about what Obama is up to and get involved in discussions. Obama is touting an open and communicative administration, but of course only time will tell.
4. Read and understand a candidate's (for local, state or federal office) platform before voting for them. This is usually published in the newspaper but you should be able to find it on their website (personally if they don't have a website, I would not vote for them).
5. Write letters to the editor of your local paper. This is especially useful for speaking out for or against local policy.
6. Start a green political blog. We use Blogger, which is free. Given the sea of green blogs out there, including ours, it might be wise to focus on you local government and try to get you fellow citizens to read and participate.

Harder:

1. Organize or join a protest.
2. Campaign for a green candidate.
3. Attend your City Council's meetings and speak about what you want changed.

Hard:

1. Become a green lobbyist at the state or federal level. You probably will need a lot of green cred first.
2. Run for office at the local, state or federal level. Only masochists need apply.

As for myself, I have done everything on the easy list except number 5, but I need to do it all a lot more. On the harder list, I did a bit of unofficial campaigning for Obama, i.e. word of mouth, but I don't think that really counts.

For number 3, if you read the comments for my December 10 post you will know I was challenged to stop just talking green politics and start walking the walk. I accepted the challenge and will be preparing a proposal requesting the City of Hattiesburg (MS) to initiate glass recycling (we currently have only paper, metal cans and plastic) and to offer curb-side recycling. I will attend the February City Council meeting and present my proposal.

I know Trevor has said he will do a similar thing in Lake Alfred, FL. What about the rest of y'all? Want to share your own political actions or other ways to get political?