Dumping Tea in the Streets

This was written for the Oklahoma Daily, and can be viewed in its original form here.
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Thomas Jefferson would be hacked off if he saw protesting today.

This country was founded because of protest, and came of age with protest. It is a vital part of American life. When the people stop caring, the country will die.

When people express their concerns in a way that doesn’t matter, it’s nearly the same thing as not caring at all.

I was startled by several car horns while driving to work recently. I looked for the transgressor, praying it wasn’t me. I instead saw several people holding signs. At least one sign was scrawled with the slogan “honk for peace.”

I want to usher in Pax Americana as much as the next guy, but I don’t think honking car horns is going to do much to advance the cause. In fact, “honk for peace” is downright silly because the time spent standing on the corner getting cold and going deaf could have been used in much more productive ways.

Now that Nov. 4 has passed, there isn’t a significant election for a while. You can’t vote out that scum you mistakenly voted in for another couple (or six) years. But you can still make your voice heard.

Every senator and congressman has a Web site with his or her e-mail address, physical address and phone number listed. You can contact the person you voted into office and voice your opinion. In fact, you can do it repeatedly. If you feel strongly enough about an issue to go stand in the cold and get people to “honk for peace,” you can contact your legislator. The phone numbers and addresses for the senators are listed at senate.gov under the “senators” tab. The phone numbers for the representatives are listed at house.gov under the “member telephone directory” link on the right side of the page.

There are many who think contacting their representatives and senators will not create change, because politicians are immune to the opinions of the people and simply do what they want. Because there are more than 500 people in Congress, this inevitably is true of a few members. It’s human nature.

But even if every single person in Congress was corrupt (which I cannot, and will not, believe is true), talking to the people who can actually do something makes a lot more sense than honking our horns for peace. Will the air take shape and sign a cease-fire for us? Will our sound so frustrate Congress that it leaps to our aid, administering justice in accordance with our every whim? No.

If petitioning Congress isn’t your bag, there are more ways to encourage change. If you truly care about something, tell someone about it. My friend Melody wants to end genocide. She is tireless. She never passes up an opportunity to talk about genocide to anyone who will listen. I am disturbed about genocides now. Previously, I didn’t know they were happening in modern times. This should be a model to those who want to bring change. Do you want peace? Bone up on the horrors of war. Tell everyone you know. Get them offended. Maybe they will contact their senators and representatives. Perhaps they will tell another person about the horrors of war and the group of concerned people will grow.

Does a honking car horn tell you how someone dies on the battlefield? Does repeated tweeting relate the horror of urban warfare for combatants and civilians alike? No. Set up a table in the union. Set up an organization through the university. Write a letter to the editor of the newspaper (dailyopinion@ou.edu). Write a story. Send money to peace-loving organizations. Boycott companies that support war and tell your friends to do the same. Start a petition and see how many signatures you can collect, then send that to your representatives and senators. Get all the people on your signature list and all the people in your organization to picket in front of the Capitol – where you may get a photo in the paper, and maybe even a story on the news.

All of these things don’t cause change. But they are forms of protest. They clearly display that we are not happy with the way things are. This is what our forefathers did. They said, over and over, that they wanted things to change. It wasn’t all the people. It was a small minority that wanted it. They fired up the majority and changed the world.

Dumping tea in the harbor is a little more effective than honking car horns.