Dale, thank you for bringing this to the forefront. While we all value and admire deeply people like MJF in our lives to provide us a voice and an image that we as individuals may not be able to do. It is also important to be reminded from time to time that the grassroots are far more important than the famous who do bring our "plight" to the public eye. Once that happens, on our behalf, it is then time for us to remember that it is the accumulation of the "small stuff" that makes the biggest difference.

For me personally, this is representation of advocacy:

The Wire Fence

The wires are holding hands around the holes;
To avoid breaking the ring, they hold tight the neighboring wrist,
And it's thus that with holes they make a fence.

There are lots of holes in my life.
There are some in the lives of my neighbors.
But if you wish, we shall hold hands,
We shall hold very tight,
And together we shall make a fine roll of fence.

We are those the wire. We make the fence. That fence is advocacy
The latter may be a single phone call. It may be standing in front of a national forum. But the fence is incredibly important.

We all have this strength within us, we just need to reach in and find it.

My advocacy contribution to our community is found in the background. I am not a spotlight kind of person. All I do is manage two PD websites.

(Also, see the words below in my signature.)