Taking back your neighborhood

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and tomorrow Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. To celebrate and start making that change a reality, Obama has been urging everyone to get out and do a little volunteer work today.

I helped do some tree planting prep at the Berkeley Aquatic Park yesterday and it was awesome to see so many people in the neighborhood coming out. It's heartening to see first hand that people do care about their neighborhoods and their environment and their country. Someone even said this was an exciting time to be alive, as we were digging out benches installed as part of a Works Progress Administration projects back in the 1930s. We can come together again and make change happen.

So the idea is that you make that your own. People have jobs and school and things to keep them busy, but I believe that a lot of people still have good intentions. I noticed on my way back from the park yesterday that the traffic island in front of my building was filthy with trash, so I got up this morning, put on my gardening gloves, grabbed my iPod and cleaned it up. There are hundreds of people living in front of that island and it only took one of us about 100 minutes to clean it. Even if only a tiny fraction of people actually did that once in a blue moon, it'd make a huge difference.

Is your sidewalk littered with trash? Or your neighborhood park? Or your shoreline? Is there something broken in your neighborhood that you know how to fix? Do you have a minute to drop off a few cans at your local food drive?

I'm asking you and Gandhi is asking and Martin Luther King Jr. is asking and Barack Obama is asking you to care a little bit, to take back your neighborhood and be that change.