As a person who has been involved in a good amount of political activism I know how difficult it is to get the media to pay any attention to what progressive activists are doing to bring about change. Not only does the corporate media ignore the work that progressives are doing in the community, but it seems that even progressive blogs dedicate very little time to covering the work of citizen activists who are out there every single day trying to move this country in a better direction.

Why is it that progressive activists are largely ignored while the Teabaggers and Birthers are able to sustain national media coverage? Even progressive blogs seem to have given the Birther movement far more coverage than I ever remember them giving to the progressive activists on our own side and I find this very troubling. I understand that the Birthers are so obviously delusional that it can be very entertaining to poke fun at them, but the fact is that Orly Taitz has absolutely no chance of succeeding at convincing the courts that her forged Kenyan birth certificate is real. Why is it that the citizen activism of a crazy right-wing dentist is able to get more coverage from progressive blogs than activists on our own side who have had a far bigger impact than Taitz will ever hope to have? Why can’t we give people like Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright, Kathy Kelly, Coleen Rowley, Naomi Wolf, and the many other citizen activists who have taken a stand on important issues as much publicity as we give to Orly Taitz?

Probably the biggest failure of the progressive movement is that we have not been very good at inspiring people on our side of the issues to walk away from the computer and get involved in their communities. We need to hear the stories of progressive activists so we can inspire others to follow in their footsteps, and because the corporate media does not want us to get involved they are not likely to start giving us additional coverage unless they are under a lot of pressure to do so. This means that it is up to us to get these stories out there.

Please go out into your communities and engage in civic action and then come back here and write about your experiences. Tell us about the challenges you faced, tell us about the people who inspired you to overcome those challenges, tell us about any victories you had no matter how big or how small those victories were, and most importantly tell us what we can do to help bring about change.

If you want to continue to write about Orly Taitz and the Teabaggers that is fine, it is important to raise awareness of what the opposition is doing so it is good to have some stories about their actions. What I would like to see however is for every person who writes about the Teabaggers to also dedicate themselves to writing at least one piece about progressive activists for every story they write about right-wing activists. While there is nothing wrong with attacking the other side, we need to put more focus into building up our own side so that we can inspire more people to get out there and make change happen. Democracy begins with you, so please go out there and get involved so that the next time you write about the Teabaggers you will be able to tell us what you did to publicly challenge those Teabaggers.