The platform it outlines is worth striving for: accessible health care, the protection and rehabilitation of our environment, an end to war, and a better, fairer educational system.

And that is why I introduced it to Intrepid Classroom. I want the book to simply be an impetus for discussion and hopefully action. I by no means feel that this book o the Gen-We movement is the end point. I hope that because of clarity we can use it as a road map towards more of what you were talking about.

The problem is that Gen-We puts an awful lot of importance on indirect action, voting with our wallets for “green” companies and voting with ballots for more progressive politicians. Important stuff, to be sure, but I’m not content with that, and I don’t think that real change is likely to come about if that is all we do. What we need is to start small, grow locally, and show the old guard what can be done, instead of turning to them for the answers.

I loved this quote and completely agree.

We are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” A “new society” because the current one is unsatisfactory, unfair, and dehumanizing, and because we can do better.

I don’t believe that voting in and participating in a system that I completely disagree with is the right course of action, and I am not satisfied with the false state of comfort that the Obama presidency has spread across the progressive landscape. Again, I agree that…

Because underneath the flashy rhetoric and the misguided trust in the same systems that got use where we are today, Eric Greenberg is calling us to act and in order to act effectively, we need to organize. I would like to start a discussion about what students within the education system can do to start effecting real change.

I want to use his text as a way to start moving toward real change. I hope that w can get a group of 5-10 people to look at his words critically, not because I think the text itself will bring about change, but I think the book will foster great discussion and hopefully better projects and ways of bringing about change.

As for the NHS platforms. I am too far removed from that organization to comment, although I loved these main points:

1. To nurture enthusiasm for learning.

2. To develop our passions into talents, in order to improve and enrich the material and intellectual lives of people everywhere.

3. To build our communities both locally and globally.

4. To demand that those who have been granted power, be it by circumstance or public vote, be it in the form of economic or political clout, behave with character.

Our job is to engage a small cadre of people willing to look at these topics further, commit their time, and have the important conversations. It is one thing to share links and videos, quite another to organize and bring about systematic change. But that is the role of the IntrepidClassroom, so let’s see what we can do to get people involved.