“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” –James Baldwin

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once denounced the “myth of time,” the myth that progress is achieved by the passage of time, instead of by the effort of citizens. He refuted the people who said “not now,” or “wait your turn,” or “it’s too soon.” He knew that the long arc of history bends towards justice, but that a just society is impossible without the lasting efforts of its citizens.

There is a long history documenting this lasting effort. Angela Davis, Henry George and James Baldwin are examples of regular people who decided that they were sick and tired of being sick and tired. They were tired of seeing one injustice after another, tired of seeing their fellow humans downtrodden and oppressed, tired of the slow pace of change.

Sound familiar? Are we not today constantly inundated with reports of mosques burned, of young unarmed black men shot down for walking down the street or suffocated for selling loose cigarettes? Are we not sick and tired of seeing 40 million Americans living in poverty? Does it not tear at our souls watching young undocumented Dreamers be afraid every day that they might be taken away from the only country they call home?

People often respond to this overwhelming stream of problems in a few ways. They say “I can’t” and turn off the news. Or they feel compelled to act, but they channel their outrage into a hashtag on Twitter or a choice picture on Instagram accompanied with a lengthy condemnation in the caption. Or, like Dr. King, they take real, concrete action. They choose to actively participate in change.

And it is indeed a choice. Inaction is still action. Ignorance is not an excuse. We are each faced with a choice, every day — to act or not to act. And so many of us choose not to act because:

1) we see the machinations of our government as abstract and separate from our everyday lives,

2) we feel that our individual capacity for impact is insignificant, and

3) we think the costs of participating are not worth the rewards.

But here’s the bottom line: Policy and politics matter because they affect you. Everything your city councilmember, state senator or Congress member does affect you, your family or your friends. Palo Alto can either encourage housing development or suppress it, either giving you an affordable home or keeping up your property value. California can push through SB 562 (single-payer health care), which will have enormous benefits for the uninsured and likely staggering consequences for taxpayers, which includes all of us. The federal government can defund Planned Parenthood or increase interest rates on student loans.

Everything they do affects you.

However, the good news is that your voice matters. You have an enormous capacity for change regardless of your career, status or ideology. Take the recent Exide lead contamination disaster in southeast Los Angeles, for example. For decades, Exide’s battery recycling plant had been contaminating homes in the surrounding cities with lead, spurred on by the incompetence and inaction of state regulators. They racked up dozens of violations throughout the years but still continued to operate. Exide’s operations threatened the lives of an estimated 100,000 people and affected more than 10,000 homes in my community.

It wasn’t until ordinary people, people who go to work, who go to school, people like you and me, organized their community and fought for their right to breathe clean air and to live free from the deadly effects of lead, that Exide’s plant was finally forced to shut down.

Ordinary people rallied together and made something happen. They realized that when no one is willing to be the first to stand up, you have to stand up. When they understood that bad policy was poisoning their children with lead, they decided to stand up and do something about it. They made change happen.

See, the long arc of history may bend towards justice, but change comes from the choices we make every day. You don’t have to be a Baldwin, or a King, or a Davis. You don’t have to devote your life to these social and political causes. But you need to choose to act. You need to get involved, because policy shapes, skewers, uplifts and can destroy your life. You need to be active, because your voice legitimately matters. You have a capacity for impact. And if you’re not engaged, then someone else will be, and they might not have your best interests in mind.

If you care about the poor, choose to act. If you care about the environment, choose to act. If you care about healthcare, choose to act. It’s not a collective action problem if you understand that the consequences of inaction will have a detrimental effect on your own life, or on the lives of your family or friends. No information cost is too high when the cost of inaction is not having housing, or not having clean air to breathe, or not having access to healthcare.

Democracy is driven by those who participate. So, participate, or risk living with policies that aren’t best for you. You have two choices, always: to act or not to act. Choose.

 

Contact Ryan Kang at ryankang ‘at’ stanford.edu.