Posted by David Wilmot, dave@oceanchampions.org
In honor of the Congressional recess, Ocean Champions is taking a blog vacation this week. However, I can't resist following Jennifer's lead on Joan Walsh's review at Salon.com of Bai's book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. By the way, Jennifer is correct - the article is worth a quick read.
Here is what caught my attention:
"Let me be clear: Like Bai, I would like to see more political will (the ideas are there; it's a mobilized constituency behind a few key ideas that's missing) to do something about the healthcare nightmare, the public education crisis, persistent inner-city poverty, the shock waves of globalization ... I could go on and on."
Yes. Political will equals ideas and honest to goodness support (being a vertebrate helps - i.e., have a little backbone!). When it comes to the crisis in our oceans we have no shortage of ideas regarding how to clean the mess up. And Ocean Champions is providing electoral support for politicians who will lead on ocean issues. BUT focus your attention on a broader mobilized constituency. More accurately the lack of a constituency remains the ocean conservation community's Achilles heal. We ask politicians to fight for our oceans, yet we don't bring an army to the battle. Some of us have shined a bright light on this need [see Oceans Policy: It's a Matter of Leadership and Turning the Tide: Charting a Course to Improve the Effectiveness of Public Advocacy for the Oceans]. Is anyone listening? Am I wrong?