The critical global events of recent months have wrought within me the unshakable conclusion that much more than passive spectatorship is required of me to begin to address the challenges, both potentially catastrophic and historically persistent, facing the peoples of today’s earth.

For most of my adult life, I’ve monitored closely current events and carefully studied the documentarian record of American history, deeming my scant commentary and analysis peppered here and there in the online format as appropriate and even reasonable; I preferred to allot most of my effort to my studies in the sciences and my day job, and though that apportionment likely cannot change in the near term, that of my free time can.

Living in the United States and working in high technology, I’m incredibly blessed to have access to good education, limitless data, and the means of  understanding it.  These advantages are highly nontrivial and not without cost: despite the remarkably steep evolution in our society in both civility and the proliferation of wealth-generating technology over the past century, an unacceptably large fraction of people lack both franchise and voice; therefore, I can no longer deny my own voice to the downtrodden, the marginalized, the impoverished, and the victims of state violence in the ongoing struggle for justice, peace, and a chance for decent survival.  And I should add that this is neither virtue nor conceit; I think of it as an elementary moral principle that privilege and advantage confers enormous responsibility, responsibility I intend to take more seriously in the days ahead.

This blog represents a long belated endeavor on my part in realizing this objective.  I, along with co-bloggers and guests, plan to offer detailed arguments and discussion, along with my growing reading list of primary and secondary sources I’ve found quite helpful in formulating sound judgments and appropriate, if stern, conclusions; born out of anecdotal discussions with hundreds of working class people of varying demographics, I’ve discovered a uniformly profound hunger for knowledge and understanding largely missing from mainstream and even articulate opinion.  With these articles, I hope to offer a host of factual refutations to common myths about poverty, war, wealth, and the like to satiate that hunger.  As the name of the blog suggests, I believe we can effect change most successfully by acquainting ourselves and others with both the population and power; I hope you the reader will join me in these monumental tasks of demonstrating solidarity with victims, empowering a disenchanted working class, elevating a marginalized underclass, and proving through historical precedent our capacity to discover within ourselves strength, compassion, and justice.