First, their statement...
Opportunity Knocks--Are We Ready? from Joe Volk, Executive Secretary, detailing what they see as some specific opportunities for FCNL in the first months of 2009Source: Friends Committee on National Legislation, which concludes:
On Tuesday night, President-Elect Obama said, "This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change, and that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other."
We at FCNL look forward to working with President Obama on these opportunities.
On the less formal level, staff members and programme assistants have taken a step back to contribute personal responses to the landmark election in a series of blog pieces. In one of these, Alex Martin writes of his sense of responsibility:
Millions of people who felt alienated by or just indifferent to politics, in the sense of our common civic project, have been connected to it by the two-year drama that has just concluded. Suddenly, they feel they have a stake. For a time, anyway, we feel like a people. How will we harness this energy? How will we keep people engaged in solving the tremendous problems we confront?
I also feel great privilege, because I work for an organization dedicated to precisely this purpose. FCNL has never been more relevant. Never has there been greater need for our work: to show people ways to remain involved with their government, and to continually remind our new leaders of the causes of peace, justice, and stewardship, so that together we may build the world we seek.
And those of us working in other parts of the world can share that sense of privilege and responsibility by holding our own leaders to account in pursuit of the same goals, and drawing inspiration from the possibilities of drawing communities together for a common cause.
