Activism

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'I went to the station at the appropriate time,' Michael continued, 'sat down in the chair, my throat dry, looked into the camera, and said, with all the passion I could muster, that the deaths of 3.5 million children each year due to vaccine-preventable diseases is a holocaust of staggering proportions. .

'Then they flashed my completed viewer editorial up on the television monitor. I saw my name and my town on the screen, below a face I didn't recognize. There was this respectable young man, a community spokesman, up there on the screen, speaking in strong terms about an important issue of the day. I had never seen myself in that light before, and I have never been the same since.'

As Michael's television editorial was airing, the last of 90 newspaper editorials in support of increasing the Child Survival Fund was published. Congress got the message and agreed to the full $50-million increase. What did the additional $50 million mean? In 1986, UNICEF estimated that it cost $5 to fully immunize a child, from manufacture of the vaccines to injection. As a result of this $50 million increase, 10 million children would be immunized, saving, by UNICEF's conservative estimate, 125,000 young lives. Fourteen years later, U.S. government funding is more than five times greater, helping to save millions of lives annually.

This progress occurred because of actions like Michael's. His story is about who we are as problem solvers-people who overcome their hopelessness and act as spiritual warriors committed to service. It is an example of what America could be in the 21st century: a nation that cares not only for itself but for all of humanity.

Some of you might ask: Aren't our elected officials the ones to take responsibility for the state of our planet and its people? I think Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart answered this question best when he said, 'We aren't passengers on spaceship Earth, we're the crew.'

But most of us see ourselves as passengers, not as crew, in the mission of stewarding the health of this planet and its people. At about the time that Michael was doing his television editorial, a number of us began to get up out of our passenger seats, walk to the cockpit, and realize. .there was nobody up there.

Those cockpit seats are 'our'seats. This essay is about the migration to the cockpit of ordinary citizens. I have tried to show how some of us have started and how the rest of us can follow.

My journey took me and others into civic and political action. That may not be your path; it might be hands-on work instead. But don't let the rage that most people feel about government and politics keep you from working in that arena if you feel pulled there. I think that Israeli diplomat Abba Eban touched upon our deep discouragement with politics when he said, 'Governments can be counted on to do the right thing, but only after they have exhausted all other possibilities.'

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