alonewiththemoon | you've got a voice

I watched the second half of Bob Woodruff's program on veterans returning from Iraq with brain injuries, and it profoundly saddened me. Woodruff was "lucky" in that he had private insurance, money, and a high profile media job, but the average soldier has none of those things and is pretty much kicked to the curb at a point when rehabilitation could make all the difference between a relatively normal life and a life of real hardship, or worse suicide. I don't know how things got so bad, though I can speculate about cronyism and political appointees and fear to speak the truth out of obligation to the appointer, who doesn't like the truth when it isn't his. And I can't do much about it--but the one thing I can do is make my opinion known to my elected officials, who in some kind of ideal world are in Washington to represent me and the other citizens of my state. So I wrote my senators this afternoon to urge investigation and more importantly resolution of the situation. Does one email make a difference? Well, no, but they can add up, and it is usually assumed that for every person who can be bothered to write, there are others who didn't write but hold the same position. I would be shocked if my senators (Kennedy and Kerry) did not share the same position I do on this issue (if only as another way to publicly illustrate this administration's botching of the war effort), but I know for a fact that supportive emails matter as much as argumentative ones do, if not more so.

So, my public service announcement: got an opinion? Write your senators and congressperson about it! It's easy to do. For senators, go to http://www.senate.gov/ and pick your senator from the list. The vast majority of them have "Contact Me" forms in their websites, so you don't even have to go through the bother of sending an email. For your congressperson, go to http://www.house.gov/ and pick your congressperson. If you don't know who that is, there's a zip-code-based representative finder.

It's easy to be cynical about our elected representatives, regardless of political party. But if we all start from a place of believing our democracy doesn't work, then we've contributed to it not working. Don't give up your voice.