Our Voice: Stand up for what you believe in
In Yemen, Oman, Egypt and Libya protesters who are not much older than students at Georgia College are protesting their governments. They want a better quality of life for themselves and their children. We can sit here and say that we support them all we want, but can we really relate to them?
They are revolutionaries, but here in America—where we lead pretty decent lives—we don’t need to overthrow our government. Can we still be revolutionaries and do we need to be? The Colonnade thinks we can if we needed to.
Throughout history the important and long lasting revolutions have been fought by the common people and for the common people. Paul Revere was an ordinary guy before he made his speech against the British crown. Legend has it that George Washington was only made commander of the patriot army because he showed up to a meeting wearing a military uniform. Great people start out small and work their way up. In the French Revolution the middle class rose up. They demanded to have food and to stop paying for the excesses of the king and queen.
We are all ordinary people, but that does not mean that we can’t do extraordinary things. We can all be revolutionaries in small ways. By standing up for ourselves and our happiness we are being radicals. By not doing what others think is right for us, we are being radicals. Going against the status quo is hard, but so important. We can’t live our life for someone else. The world might be a better place if people were happier. You can only be happy when you live for you.
Standing up for others is even more important. Picking a cause that you can advocate for makes you a revolutionary because so many people don’t do anything.
If you think Tibet should be free then tell everyone. Want everyone to go green? Then start talking. Words are powerful and all good revolutionaries know how to use them.
The Colonnade does not condone violence so keep those protests civil. We do fundamentally believe everyone has a voice and a story to tell, that’s part of the reason we work for a newspaper.
Find your voice and go against what other people might believe if it goes against your conscience. Listen to that voice inside you that tells you what is right and what is wrong because so many tune it out. We are the generation that needs to help change the world for the better so let us go be revolutionary and stand up for what we believe is right.
Posted by 
