It's Never Too Late

Teri Mills is a longtime Democracy For America community member. Her guest column on health care appears on Blog for America on Fridays and she blogs at nationalnurse.blogspot.com.

This year, the first night of Christmas actually begins on Christmas Eve (24th), the first night of Hanukkah is also the 24th at sundown, and the first night of Kwanzaa begins on the 25th at sundown. The Eastern Orthodox Christmas begins while other Christians are celebrating Epiphany (the night of the January 5th). So many faith celebrations will coincide this year that it's an especially great time to unite in generosity and love. In other words, if we, the people of Democracy for America, wanted to perform a DFA Corps activity for the holiday season, it is not too late to do so. It would require some imagination and a few tasks to make it happen, but it's never too late to give a gift to others who are less fortunate, especially after the horrific year of natural disasters we have just gone through.

Last week, I asked the blog to make suggestions of what they thought would be an appropriate DFA Corps activity for this holiday season. Voodoo Sophie McPherson suggested a massive letter writing campaign to our troops overseas in Baghdad and Afghanistan. Here's what needs to happen to accomplish this - BFA writes a post on the blog asking us to email letters of support to our troops, just like it asks us to sign petitions with comments. We collectively email this link on to others. Within two weeks, there are thousands of emails that can be sent to America's finest. Tom Hughes could send us an email too to remind those who don't regularly check the blog anymore that their letters of encouragement would be appreciated too.

Lindab said it would be wonderful if we could adopt a family in New Orleans. Now maybe we couldn't find employment for them, or even travel to Louisiana to build their new home, but we certainly could set up a link on the blog to collect money as a group, and then DFA staffers could phone the American Red Cross to locate one especially needy family. I bet Monisha may even know of one that could use our help.

Finally, Charlene suggested knitting scarves for the homeless - she donates hers to the Pine Street Inn in Boston. If you have a love of knitting or crocheting, maybe DFA would allow us to mail in scarves and they could deliver all of these together to a homeless shelter in Vermont. It is certainly chilly enough and the need would be there.

It is never too late to make a difference, and never under estimate the power of one or a group of thousands of activists.

Teri Mills, RN, MS, ANP
Democracy for Oregon

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