Caring for The People of The Blog

Dear Students for Nuclear a Weapons Free World,

I am hoping this blog is reaching students desiring to bring hope for a safe world and a saner future. I would like to help. My name is RuthAnn Purchase and I am working to find more funding for internships, more support for student activism in general, and more efficient and effective methods of social change.

I believe we need to publicize the success stories of student activists in order to recruit more students into this movement! Negative information recruits angry people who are not necessarily the most diplomatic, or convincing. Fear based motivational techniques promote denial at best, or "bury-my-head-in-the-sand" at worst.

Can we overcome these two obvious results of the most favored strategies of activists in the past?

PLEASE, GIVE ME YOUR INPUT:
What is most effective method for getting people to move through denial,
getting heads out of the sand,
and building courage for action?

I would venture to say:
THE ARTS?
MORE HUMOR?
And definitely MORE SUCCESS STORIES!

That is why I love the new "Two Nukes Hit the Streets" video.
It does the first two upright. Now it begs for a trailer with the story about a real human being who got funded to make that video! Tell how they used it and how they tracked the results and how many people have watched it! That inspires more of the same!

Thus my invitation to check out Net2, a social networking group that supports the use of new technology "mashing" for non-profits.

One theory for effectiveness that I have adopted is as follows:
Balance "in-your-face" harsh reality with courage building techniques!

I.e.: I watch many Americans influenced by real facts "bury their heads" in the electronic "sand," or in their drug of choice, or sport of their choice.

If we build courage and give specific, measurable, out-come focused actions to jump into EVERY TIME we present, we build momentum and we retain energy for taking those first baby steps toward action. E'vuala! A new activist is born!

If we are asking people to do more than write a letter, but we must empower them to do more. In order to promote intentional, effective activism, we cannot support "the passing fancy" activist or the "quick fix for guilt trips" campaign. We must help people adopt this cause as a moral obligation, as a life long passion. And we must together build our courage to face hard questions in hard times. We might even adopt trauma transformation techniques as we present so that everyone we work with is taking good care of their stress levels.

Please, consider helping me create a simple, interactive workshop & social networking tool that empowers the overwhelmed, encourages the ashamed, and unites the befuddled.

I have theories, but you, students, are are the ground and in the trenches, as it were.
You understand new lingo and new technology that is reaching far more than any academic presentation will ever reach. And you have energy for the future. So write to me. Give me your responses to this blog. Let's do this together.

May our synergy clear a path toward more practical action and quicker results,
For heaven & earth's sake,

RuthAnn Purchase,
Greenbridge CDC

PS
I work in the Philadelphia region, am a member of the UN Working Group of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and a member of Soka Gakkai Int'l.

I hope the students in this network sign off
with a bit of detail about themselves so that we can get to know who is listening,
and who is writing, and where they are working geographically.
(You too, Simon!)