Inspired

I was inspired by Obama’s run for the presidency, but I did not volunteer or really do anything except “donate” my Facebook status on Election Day and vote for him. I attended one rally early last year when he came to speak at my school, but even after 100s of emails from organizations such as Moveon.org, I didn’t volunteer.

In the beginning of 2008, it was because I was busy trying to find a job, busy trying to graduate from law school, and busy trying to figure out our move across the country. In the summer, I was busy studying for the bar, so I truly did not have ANY time to volunteer. After I started my job, there was not much to do in the state of MA as it was obviously going to go for Obama, so instead of driving up to NH to help out, I stayed at home.

I obviously know a lot about what is going on in politics (who couldn’t this year?), but I have never felt the drive to volunteer. When I get emails from different organizations asking me to talk to my congressman about an issue, if I can quickly send an email that is already written out for me then I will. If it requires me to do much more? I’ll be honest and say that I just delete the email, no matter how personal the issue is to me. I believe one would call this laziness.

That is why the people that are out there, on the ground, standing up for what they believe in, inspire me. I recently came across an article in the Washington Post about Tim DeChristopher, a University of Utah student. Having always been an environmentalist, instead of picketing the auction of public land (most of it near national parks) to oil and gas men, he registered as a bidder and won 13 tracts of land. However, being a student means that he was not able to pay $1.8 million- the cost of the land he bought to keep from getting drilled.

Recently, he raised $45,000 to cover the cost of retaining the leases to the land….at least for a little while. However, there is still the problem of potential criminal charges and the other $1,755,000 need to pay for the land. Would you have the balls to do this? To sit in a room of strangers and bid for what you believe in, knowing that not only did you not have ANY money, but that you could face jail time? To me, that’s pretty impressive.

Are you also impressed or inspired? Go donate or read more of Tim’s story here: http://www.bidder70.org/. By the way, I already donated......

Can you imagine an oil derrick bobbing up and down while viewing this scenery?

Or how about here?