My plan for a community initiative is to get the youth and adults in my community involved in politics, or at the least understand it better. I would like to do this by holding sessions, with better educated people as guest to help educate the ones in my community. There are some individuals in my community who are citizens of the U.S. but don’t take advantage of it what’s-so-ever! They let it go to complete waste. Ways they do this include not voting, not getting informed, etc. I think that sometimes we (Muslims) underestimate ourselves. For example, we’ll have citizenship and the right to vote, yet we won’t vote, but once the results of the election come in we’ll complain about it. When we had the right of voting! I actually know someone who believes…why we should vote and get informed when our votes aren’t even counted. To me that isn’t necessarily true. Yes, there is an electoral college, who at the end of the day makes the final decision. But, think about it…what is the Electoral College made up of? Members of congress, correct? Representatives and senators that WE elected, and chose. So I’d say to my friend and those like him, “tighten up your research skills.”
I did some research myself and I found this nice quote that I really liked, it was “if you don’t vote; don’t complain about the results”. That little nine worded quoted had me gushing with thoughts. The United Sates is a democracy for a reason! The reason is for the residents and citizens to have say in the way the country is ran. A scenario that I would like to use is the waste of food. We all know that in Islam this is haram. Why is it though? It is because so many other people around the world wish they had just a small portion of that food you’re wasting. I see the government that way. So many people around the world living in dictatorship governments wish they had just a little say in the way the government is ran. Yet, we have that opportunity and we waste it. Wallah, shame on us!
With my community initiative, I hope to start off by just getting the people in my community to see the benefits of a democracy, and how if they participated it could make such a huge difference. Comment telling me your thoughts, advice,etc.