Activist of One

Last night was an interesting "Movie Night" for SVP Cincinnati. Our first quarterly educational event was viewing excerpts from The New Metropolis - a PBS documentary about urban sprawl. With the diversity of our Partnership (and their guests) the discussion started moving to policy and politics.

Big and complex society problems are the most complicated and naturally are seen from various points of reference. In fact the problems exist because predicting human individual behavior is impossible and combining that behavior into social networks and communities adds to the impossibility.

What struck me most in the movie was the one activist - who passionately said "I'm not going to sit idle - I'm going to DO SOMETHING about this". Note the word activist - IT MEANS ACTION. She then began to have home meetings and solicited help from others. Then ...... (you'll have to watch the rest to see what happened).

So we all sat a watched passively, we discussed politely, and then drove home. Nothing will happen until one person says - "I'm going to DO SOMETHING about this". It starts with one - or as Dr. J. E. said to me the other day - "An Activist of One"