A Call to Action

President-Elect Obama has challenged each of us increase our "civic engagement" before the inauguration. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines civic engagement as: "individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern."

With only 32 days until the inauguration, there is not much time to plan and execute an effort. Three ideas were put forward during our local meeting at Reader's Books Sunday night:

1. Donate 1-2 hours a week over the next 5 weeks to a local non-profit;
2. Run our own food-drive to support FISH and the Redwood Empire Food Bank;
3. Hold an inter-agency meeting to see how we can help fill any gaps in the local community support network of non-profits.

The day after our meeting the following request came from the Community Organizer network leadership:

OUR FIRST CALL TO ACTION!
ADOPT A FOOD BANK FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The first official post-election action will be to adopt food banks for the holidays.

Nearly 30 million Americans rely on government aid and food banks to keep food on their tables amid unemployment and rising prices. In LA County alone, demand has jumped 33%, while contributions have dropped precipitously.

To that end, the hope is that we can focus on both donating some time and goods to the local food banks between now and Jan 19, 2009! Please stay tuned as we had two members from our group who agreed to contact both FISH and Redwood Empire Food Bank and report back to us.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for."