A grand total of 30 or thereabouts were convicted of ANYTHING and all but a handful were convicted of the legal equivalent of a parking ticket. Of those convicted, about 8 at most were convicted of misdemeanor trespass and some of those served no more than ten days in a country club jail without locks on the gates or anywhere else that would interfere with their freedom---essentially they were sentenced to ten days receiving room and board and recreation on a decent vacation in a nice place at taxpayer expense. One guy pleaded guilty to a minor charge so he could pay the fine and frame the receipt for his living room wall to prove to his many grandchildren that he had been arrested saving babies. Generally, they refused to sign probation papers, pay "conviction fees," or pay any fines imposed. The statutory alternative was to work off fines at $10 per day in jail but the state found them to be very troublesome prisoners when incarcerated pre-trial for refusing to identify themselves or to cooperate with photographing and fingerprinting.
I charged no fees for the legal work and cost the state an absolute fortune. As a result of that and the absolute militancy of the pro-lifers, most charges were dumped altogether by the prosecutors and some were dismissed "in the interest of justice" by some usually tough judges.
As to guns, I never belonged to the NRA but I did volunteer for sharply reduced legal fee legal work for several NRA members, obtaining permits to carry for state residents and representing out of state members arrested in my state.
By analogy, what have YOU done to abolish gummint skewels??? They are a waste of time generally for a conscientious parent who cares about curriculum, morality, content, etc., and understands that his/her own children are his/her primary responsibility. School board meetings, public hearings, phony "experts", people often devoid of any grasp of substantive subject matter in their "educations," but having attained that most useless of academic credentials---a "teaching" degree, bachelor's, master's or doctorate in "Education." The nuns I had in a parochial grammar school (with one exception) had nothing beyond a high school diploma and we were two years ahead of the public school kids when that city was still civilized and its school superintendent was a woman of genuine academic talent, dedication and attainment unlike each and every successor since her retirement in 1960.
As to the "whys of my involvement," Roe vs. Wade will be overturned just as were Plessy vs. Ferguson and Dred Scott vs. Sandford, the 2nd Amendment will survive and be enforced and the gummint skewels will be generally abolished.
One more: Brick and mortar higher edumakashun has priced itself out of future existence. Kids are graduating with degrees in political correctness, political anthropology, world geography, sociology and, yes, "education" virtually devoid of useful skills, often unemployable and with $200,000 or more in non-bankruptable college loans just to get to what has increasingly become a useless bachelor's degree. It cost me in the late 1960s, $1,000 per year to attend a private college that you have herd of, and $600 per year to attend the state law school (the only public school I ever attended for credit rather than recreation (astronomy and typing when I was too young for my factory-worker parents to leave unsupervised and too old for summer camp. My youngest is attending a rival private college (because it is very good at her very practical major) at a cost of $40,000+ per year.
My public school educated wife (who then graduated Yale with a liberal arts degree) and I decided before the birth of our very first child that she would not be put in public schools. She was an inmate at the local and very rural public high school because she insisted and had burned a number of alternatives. When she wanted to attend the public high school with "her friends," we told her that it was her call BUT it would be for BOTH of the remaining years of high school and there would be no more transferring. She did not have a happy experience. We went to every parent-teacher conference, oversaw her homework, attended school functions and and, except for one English teacher, one guidance counselor and one sports coach, we found that school a waste of time and her talent. Fortunately she had developed the habit of being a voracious reader long before getting to that school. If the school had not existed, we would have kept her on a shorter leash as to burning the alternatives. The other kids never darkened the door of the public schools anywhere.
The simple and preferable cause in most jurisdictions is defund them and abolish them in favor of various alternatives in the private sector not infected by the schemes of Horace Mann and John Dewey or controlled by the financially and ideologically rapacious National Education Association and/or American Federation of Teachers.
I have no idea of whether you belong to one of those unions. If you do, then go as a visitor to a national convention of your union. I have done that with each of them in the mid-1970s. Wander through the exhibit hall where vendors are pushing their "educational" wares to the delegates. See the radicalism that pervades each and every table: Curriculum units on the fate of Chilean gay communists who "disappeared" during the Pinochet restoration of Chilean civilization; racism, sexism, "homophobia," and every perverted left-wing cause known to man or beast. If your shop steward is not jamming your mailbox with this crud, it is such "curricula" that are being offered to your national delegates.
AND since you asked what I do as to pro-life and guns, and since you equate those issues with gummint skeweling, I would also ask whether you have taken advantage of the Beck decision of the SCOTUS that guarantees your right to refuse to pay your union so much of your union dues as goes to politics. If not, why not??? You know the evil they do with the political portion of the dues.
Second I did belong to the union when I worked in New York, (It was a condition of employment) and the Beck decision came down after I left.
I did consider belonging here in Va, but found personal insurance at a cheaper rate than the union dues.
Sadly it was people like you that caused people to have insurance that cost a fortune.
As Softballmominva said in her reply to you. I make no bones about my conservatism in or out of the classroom and my Principal leaves me alone as to the content of my subject area.
I set high standards and my students achieve them. In my technical drawing classes the standards are higher than the ones that the community college sets. I teach there as adjunct one semester per year.