My political influence-does it exist at all?

I too attended last week's guest lecture by Mitchel Cohen and was surprised by it's structure. Mr Cohen didn't actually teach us something but rather encouraged us think about our personal political influence. He mentioned all these little actions where a few people went out and drew attention to their interests by doing crazy things. To be honest, I used to think that these actions wouldn't change anything. But I do get the point of trying to get attention by doing many things that don't seem to have a huge impact on anything-if you do that regularly or with many people politicians have to react to it.
So Mr Cohen got me think about all this again and made clear, how important it is to go out and express your feelings and opinions.
"Resitance is not only positive, but it's necessary" I like this sentence because it shows the importance of going out and expressing yourself. In order to try to be more politically active and fight for my interest I will go on strike next wednesday:

http://www.asta.uni-dortmund.de/2009/05/28/bildungsstreik-in-dortmund/

My weak point though is that I still don't think that I should attend every election that comes up. I didn't vote last sunday because I wasn't in Dortmund and, sorry, was too lazy to vote via postal vote. If I knew that my single voice can really be important and change something I would go and vote. But at the moment, I just don't see the utter necessity...

Oh dear, I do have the impression of having written in a very unstructured way-sorry for that, but there were so many thoughts in my mind that I tried to tie together.

But back to the lecture again: I was shocked by this situation in New York in 1999 where pesticides were set free in order to fight against mosquitos. That was just ridiculous: 7 people got sick through these mosquitos whereas 1000 got sick due to pesticides-this is unbelievable!

To sum this all up a little: I liked the guest lecture as it gave me many thought-provoking impulses. I also thought it was very good to have the audience participating in the lecture by asking questions or express their thoughts.

"Please don't raise your hands-just shout" -> That's what we are ought to do!!!