I’ve nothing to say today that hasn’t been said more than once in the past. All one need do is scan the pages of the world’s newspapers to realize we’re on the brink of something, that this is a time to choose to either make your voice heard or bury your head in the sand. What will I tell my children when they are old enough to understand the importance of this global fight, of this crucial time in our shared history? That their parents willfully chose to remain ignorant and silent when they could have involved themselves and lent their voices to a growing global choir demanding justice and accountability for more than just themselves? I cannot, in good conscience, live with being guilty of such irresponsibility. Because this isn’t just about one war, or one reckless government, or the exploitation of one country and its people. This is about the path that we, as citizens of free nations, must work to alter. This is about becoming more than votes within a system, more than a marginal voice in a landscape of apathy and easily disregarded public discontent. This is about ensuring that we are not so easily bemused, not so ignorant that we don’t know the difference between manipulation and information. We must work to reclaim the dignity of those practices that have been stolen and sullied by corporate interests and the greed of those who profit from our continued degradation. This is about taking responsibility for the actions of our governments, not claiming ourselves innocent of their crimes because we lacked the courage to forcibly confront them.

We have reached a crucial point of decision. Do we raise our children in a world in which we continue to be regarded as peons that represent little more than means to political ends, or do we raise them in a world in which people actively embrace the realization that the status quo is something that must always be challenged and questioned? For if not by us, then who? If not now, then when?

Easy isn’t for the free. Easy is for the willfully confined. So how easy do you want it?