A Small Victory

Some of my proudest blogging moments have come from the work I did with both Chief Wiggles and Spirit of America (which is carrying on the Chief's work). So it pleases me very much to see that Marc Danziger, aka Armed Liberal, has signed on to be COO of Spirit of America. What Jim Hake started with SOA is nothing short of amazing. His vision and goals are admirable; the way he has put turned his vision into reality and has made his goals attainable says as much about Jim Hake the man as it does about Jim Hake the businessman. And I do believe he has hit up on the internet's greatest commodity when it comes to getting project like SOA noticed. I speak, of course, of bloggers. Employing and relying upon bloggers gives anyone a a huge resource of publicity that just can't be bought. Need a little info on SOA? I turn to Jeff Jarvis for that:

Spirit of America is going to let us all do more. It carries on the work and spirit of Chief Wiggles and Operation Give and countless individual soldiers who have had their families back home send baseballs and frisbees over to give to kids -- but in a big way. They will raise millions of dollars to respond to requests from the streets of Iraq for material such as tools, help with media (both TV and weblogs!), help start microbusinesses owned by Iraqis, and help bring sports back to the Iraqi youth. Eventually, SoA hopes to be a conduit for needs in Iraq and contributions from America. Think of it as open-source nation-building. Spirit of America is already helping. Last week, Kerry put together the shipment of 15 pallets of tools to send to Iraqi.

Spirit of America is now embarking on a lofty goal: In the next few weeks, the organization hopes to sign up a million Americans as contributors, volunteers or simply people who are interested enough to pay attention. Be one of those million. There are thousands of things you can do to help SOA. Maybe you have days and days worth of time to give, maybe you only have a few seconds. Whatever your availability is, SOA will have some way for you to help. I can't stress the importance of what SOA is doing. I'll quote Jeff Jarvis again: If we can help the Iraqis build their nation and their democracy and if we can connect with them on a personal level -- if, to be blunt, we can demonstrate that Americans are not ugly -- then we create a foothold for democracy, freedom, modernity, civilization, and just friendship in the Middle East. This is not about pro-war or anti-war. There are no sides in this. There is just doing; just helping one nation reach out to another, making the way for peace and civility to flow between them. You will not stop hearing about this from me. I'm going to do everything I can to help SOA not only reach their goal of one million American volunteers; but I will help them in any other way they need. I think this is the most important thing we can do at home to help win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and make the road to democracy and peace one paved with fulfilled intentions. Get involved.