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Sep 2, 2011

"We never know which of us will start the chain reaction. But one of us will." --Colin Beavan

An Accidental Activist

"So many of us have good ideas for helping the world. But we tuck our ideas away. I did. I'd tell myself that if the idea were any good someone else would have already done it. That I'm not capable of making a difference. I'd sit on my ideas, get on with my 'life,' and then feel angry at the world because the problems I cared about didn't get solved. I had that fear of going first. Then I took my first hapless step into what I call accidental activism. In 2006, I started a project where I lived as environmentally as possible for a year -- with my little family, on the ninth floor of an apartment building in the middle of New York City -- to attract attention to the world's environmental, economic, and quality of life crises. I had no experience as an activist. Yet suddenly my project caught fire."