Getting involved

I'm now the BSL person ("Director of Legislative Affairs") for the Love-A-Bull pit bull group here in Austin. Very cool. I've wanted to do something more local and hands-on for a while, and now I get the chance.

We're facing BSL in the legislature this year in Texas, so I'm getting prepared. Flyers, handouts, and possibly some presentations.

It's amazingly hard to get people to actually do stuff, even simple things like call their reps. But change only happens when you act. You can't just join a group and then brush your hands off. What's the point of that?

People always say "Well, I'm just so busy." So what? I'm busy too. We're all busy. You're telling me you can't take three minutes to dial a phone and say "Please don't support HB 925."? It takes longer to order a pizza, for crying out loud.

A while ago, I posted a notice announcing that I needed help with the daily postings for my BSL site. Seriously, it takes me several hours a day, every day of the week. Sometimes I need a break, sometimes I'm on a trip and I can't post, and sometimes I have a real job to attend to. Is it so much to ask for volunteers to assist with posting?

It wasn't too much to ask, apparently, but it was too much to expect that anyone would hang around. I got dozens of cheerful responses, offers of assistance--lots of people willing to help. But that's as far as they went. When it came down to actually doing the job, only one person lasted longer than a week. I'm on my own again.

Similarly, when I asked for help writing some static pages, which is a limited commitment to a single topic, only one person has ever come through for me. And she's done a bang-up job, but still, out of all the people who said they would happily help, she's the only one who actually did.

Why offer to help if you're not really going to? I can understand why some people might do it--to feel altruistic--but all talk and no action is really just the opposite of altruistic. It's quite selfish and obnoxious.