Paul Thomas Richards ARE CORPORATE MEDIA AND SELF-SERVING POLITICIANS DESTROYING YOUR COMMUNITY?
Here are 86 Constructive Ways to Fight Back
The United States are big enough for everyone to have her or his own unique opinions and beliefs. And, with the exception of Faux “News,” Americans are gracious enough to respect each other, whether we disagree or not.
However, corporate media like Fox and most politicians try to use legitimate differences as ammunition for their own personal, political, economic, cultural, and religious wars. They try to divide us, separate us, instill inferiority in most, and superiority in some. This is NOT what America is about!
I’m not threatened by diversity. I grew up with kids of different colors from families of different faiths with widely different incomes. When I was young, I explored and attended all the churches in Helena, Mont. I felt that every one had legitimacy, whether I agreed with everything they said or not.
Even though we may ultimately choose to settle upon one community of faith; may we never close the doors to anyone because of race, creed, ethnicity, culture, or color!
Here are just a few ways to make sure we all stay open to each other:
- Attend plays; listen to music; watch movies; browse bookstores and libraries, or go to cultural events, festivals, dances, holidays, observances, and performances by artists whose race or ethnicity is different from your own.
- Volunteer at social services organizations.
- Attend services at a variety of churches, synagogues, mosques, cathedrals, and temples. Search out all types of information to learn about different faiths and beliefs.
- Visit local senior citizens’ centers and collect oral histories. Donate large-print reading materials and books on tape or CDs. Offer to help with craft projects and recreational opportunities.
- Visit ethnic neighborhoods and churches.
- Shop at ethnic grocery stores and specialty markets. Get to know the owners and staff. Ask about their family histories.
- Participate in school, library, church, and community diversity programs. For ideas, go to “Teaching Tolerance,” located at: http://www.tolerance.org/ .
- Ask a person of another cultural heritage to teach you how to perform a traditional dance, make traditional art and clothing, play traditional music, or cook a traditional meal.
- Learn sign language.
10. Take a conversation course in another language that is spoken in your community.
11. Teach an adult to read.
12. Speak up when you hear slurs, insults, discrimination, hated, and fear-mongering. Let people know that abusive speech and actions are not acceptable in pluralistic and constructive communities and societies.
13. Imagine what your life might be like if you were a person of another race, culture, religion, physical size or shape, mental ability, gender or sexual orientation, or economic standing. How might your “today” have been different? And, what about your “tomorrow”?
14. Study Native American history, civil rights, and civil liberties. Learn about tribal sovereignty. Tour tribal reservations and areas of special interest to Indigenous Americans. Visit historical sites, museums, and attend powwows.
15. Talk with your elders and research your family history. Share information about your heritage in talks to your school class, church and community organization, and in other conversations.
16. List all the stereotypes you can — positive and negative — about particular groups. Which of these stereotypes do you carry in your real-life words and actions?
17. Think about how you appear to others. List personality traits that are compatible with tolerance, like compassion, curiosity, and openness. List those traits that seem incompatible with tolerance; like jealousy, bossiness, hatred, fear, prejudice, and superiority.
18. Create an informal “diversity profile” of your friends, co-workers and acquaintances. Set the goal of expanding it a little further each year.
19. Invite someone of a different background to join your family for a meal or holiday.
20. Offer multi-cultural dolls, toys, music, or games as gifts.
21. Assess the cultural diversity reflected in your home’s artwork, furniture, food, music and literature. Add something new!
22. Don’t buy playthings, books, music, magazines, movies, and video games that promote violence and hatred. Withdraw all support from media and corporations that glorify war and violence over diplomacy and respectful communication.
23. Point out stereotypes and cultural misinformation depicted in movies, videos, newspapers, news and other television programming, Web sites; computer games, magazines, music, books, and other media.
24. Establish free and open dialogue about all social issues. Support your children—let them know that no subject is taboo. Too fat? Too slim? Too smart? Too stupid? Acne? Maturation? Different body type than peers? Talk about it!
25. Take your family or friends to an ethnic restaurant. Talk to the owners and staff. Look up information. Learn about more than just the food.
26. Create and support local food banks, soup kitchens, domestic violence support services, mental health programs, free or low cost health care, recycling centers, and animal shelters. One simple act of walking a dog temporarily trapped in a shelter’s cage will change the whole world for both of you!
27. Reduce, reuse, and recycle.
28. Support your community’s second hand stores.
29. Gather information about local volunteer opportunities and let your children select projects for family participation.
30. Involve all members of the family in selecting organizations for your charitable gifts and donations.
31. Are your heroes aggressive males? Help your children see heroic qualities in all those who may not be aggressive males, whose contributions often go unrecognized; such as health care workers, teachers, artists, poets, musicians, and those who volunteer for homeless and domestic abuse shelters, senior citizens’ homes, churches, recycling centers, community centers, food banks, soup kitchens, and animal refuges.
32. Affirm your children’s curiosity about various races, cultures, and ethnicities.
33. Help young children make an illustrated list of what friends do or what friendship means.
34. Read books and play music that contain multi-cultural and tolerance themes with children.
35. When you are angry, be careful not to hurt others. Watch what you say and do. Stay nonviolent in actions and words. Curb your road rage. Be an example for those around you.
36. Enroll your children in schools, daycare centers, after-school programs, library programs, sports, recreational programs, and camps that reflect and celebrate differences.
37. Participate in Big Brother or Big Sister programs.
38. Live in an integrated and economically diverse neighborhood.
39. Read a book, listen to music, or watch a movie about other cultures.
40. Donate diversity- and tolerance-related books, music, films, magazines and other materials to libraries. Organize book, cd, and dvd drives.
41. Buy art supplies for a local school. Sponsor a mural about the cultural composition and heritage of your community.
42. Volunteer to be an advisor for a students’ club.
43. Support a wide range of extracurricular activities, including band, orchestra, choir, speech, and drama, to help students find their place at school and nurture all aspects of their personality.
44. Coach a sports team. Encourage schools to provide equal resources for boys’ and girls’ athletics. Let every team member play and have fun.
45. Applaud the other teams. Promote good sportsmanship. Ban taunting.
46. Assess your school’s compliance with the accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Organize a class project to improve compliance. For ideas, go to: http://www.ada.gov/ .
47. Donate tape or digital recorders to a school that is conducting oral history projects. Suggest a focus on local diversity and tolerance issues.
48. Start a pen pal program. Get students in touch with people in different parts of the state, country, and world.
49. Sponsor and support “Conflict Resolution” programs.
50. Provide confidential methods for students to report harassment, abuse, bullying, or violence.
51. Encourage school administrators to adopt Internet polices that challenge on-line hate, bullying, harassment, pornography, and violence.
52. Invite bilingual and multilingual students to give morning greetings and announcements on the PA system or at assemblies in their home languages.
53. Make sure that school cafeterias offer options for students and staff with dietary restrictions.
54. Always keep adoptive and foster children and children lacking responsible parents in mind; when planning educational or fun trips, programs, parties, sports, and other recreation.
55. Ask schools not to schedule tests or school meetings on the major holidays of any religious group. Develop a school calendar that respects religious diversity.
56. Hold a “diversity potluck” lunch. Invite co-workers to bring dishes that reflect their cultural heritage.
57. Arrange a “box-lunch forum” on topics of diverse cultural and social interest.
58. Partner with a local school or library and encourage your colleagues to serve as tutors or mentors.
59. Value the input of everyone.
60. Push for equitable leave policies, including paid maternity and paternity leave.
61. Provide employees with paid leave to participate in volunteer projects.
62. Publicize corporate giving widely, and challenge other companies to match or exceed your efforts.
63. Keep your office door open whenever possible. Foster an open and supportive work environment.
64. Encourage locally-owned and minority-owned businesses; and get to know the proprietors and staff.
65. Support locally-owned and publicly-owned media, such as community radio and television stations.
66. Participate in blood drives, or clean up a local park or stream. Identify such issues that reach across racial, ethnic, and other divisions; and forge alliances for tackling them.
67. Hold a community-wide yard sale and use the proceeds to improve a park, community center, or library. Celebrate the event with a potluck picnic!
68. Support community gardening programs.
69. Build/Plant a local community “Peace Garden.”
70. Start a “language bank” of volunteer interpreters for all languages used in your community.
71. Encourage fellow members of your community to be “Tolerance Activists.” For ideas, check out “Teaching Tolerance,” located at: http://www.tolerance.org/.
72. Create a Web site for your town, school, library, church, or social organization.
73. Host a “multi-cultural extravaganza” such as a food fair or art, fashion and talent show.
74. Establish and fund mobile libraries to make multi-cultural books and films widely available, especially to poorly-served inner urban areas and rural reservations.
75. Establish an ecumenical alliance. Bring people of diverse faiths together for retreats, workshops or potluck dinners. Welcome agnostics and atheists too!
76. Write a letter to the editor, if your newspaper ignores any segment of the community or refuses to carry stories about local cooperation and tolerance.
77. Contact the owners and manager, if your local television or radio station downplays the importance and strength inherent in diversity.
78. Start a campaign to establish a multi-cultural center for the arts. Ask local museums, performance venues, libraries, and other learning centers to host exhibits and events reflecting diversity at home and elsewhere.
79. Present a “Disabilities Awareness” event with the help of a local, state, and national rehabilitation organizations; sheltered workshops, and community-based group homes.
80. Make sure that anti-discrimination protection in your community extends to all people, regardless of sexual orientation.
81. Encourage law enforcement agencies to establish diversity training for all officers, to utilize community-based policing, and to eliminate the use of inequitable tactics like racial and sexual profiling.
82. Help build a Habitat for Humanity home.
83. Conduct a “diaper equity” survey of local establishments. Commend managers who provide changing tables in men’s as well as women’s restrooms.
84. Register to vote. Support candidates and leaders that believe in tolerance and diversity and the sound communities these traits build.
85. Print out and share this list.
86. Brainstorm other ideas with your friends, family, church, school, and organizations that will help bring your community closer together.
SPECIAL BONUS # 87: Support light-rail intra-city and heavy-rail intercity mass transit wherever feasible; fully equipped to handle the disabled, elderly, shoppers and their stuff, bicyclists and their bicycles, and travelers and their gear. (Does anyone utilize baby strollers anymore, or have they been supplanted by baby backpacks and frontpacks?)
Dispatches from the Wildlands™ ©2005-2011 by Paul Richards
Editor’s Notes:
MANY thanks to the fine folks at Teaching Tolerance for their incredible array of resources. Check them out at http://www.tolerance.org/ . Send money, if you can. And/Or, sign up for their free Teaching Tolerance list-serv. Also, all educators can get a free subscription to Teaching Tolerance Magazine and free information kits, by CLICKING HERE.
A journalist with more than 43 years’ experience in Western politics and resource issues, Paul Richards has served as editor or co-editor of three newspapers, newsman and editor for The Associated Press, and elections manager for The AP, UPI, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC.
Richards founded and produced a successful radio news network; founded and hosted a political television interview program; founded and managed a news service for weekly newspapers; and authored a syndicated political column.
Richards is a voluntarily-retired member of the Montana House of Representatives and a former candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Richards owns a leading consulting firm for nonprofit organizations and Indigenous Peoples, PR Media Consultants®, Public Interest Media Since 1968™, near the community of Boulder, Mont.; works as a professional writer and editor; and contributes Dispatches from the Wildlands™, located on-line at: http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/ to AlterNet.
