When I learned yesterday of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto I paused from my work momentarily, sat back in my chair and asked myself, "can we change?" I mean, for real. Can humans, as a species, change? Our track record does not instill confidence. There is some irony in the fact that in the year when social consciousness, going green and corporate social responsibility have decidedly arrived on the pop culture scene, we continue to witness the murder of iconic leaders, the crackdown on the freedom movement in Burma, the global economic effects of unchecked greed in the sub-prime mortgage market and other head-scratching travesties at a pace that has not slackened one iota. A thinking person has to wonder - photo-op posturing aside - has anything really changed at all?

Sure, more people are utlizing the benefits of the hybrid car. Fair Trade coffee is easy to find and tasty too. Compact fluorescent light bulbs are pricey but, hey, even the Wal*Mart machine has gotten the green religion and is pumping them deep into the heartland. This is all good stuff but hopefully it adds up to more than just us feeling satisfied that we've done our part.

Because we haven't. Not yet. Change is slow and painful and takes more than just changing a light bulb or ensuring that our beverage is in a 10% post-consumer paper cup. When year after year we keep losing the beacons of light - think Anwar Sadat, Yitzak Rabin, John Lennon, MLK, RFK, Rosemary Nelson, Anna Politkovskaya and countless others - you have to wonder if open season on Change Agents ever really ends.

The Change Agents we celebrate on Changents are beacons of light, hope and strength. Mercifully, most are not operating everyday in the cross-hairs - but some certainly are. Real change means more than opening our wallets and slightly altering our habits of unrelenting consumption. It's about finding the courage within ourselves to really leave our mark on something that matters. Creating change should not necessitate putting our lives on the line but, clearly, sometimes it does. Sometimes it also means putting our careers, our reputations or our creature comforts on the line…and that's OK. Because anything that is worthwhile comes with risk.

We need our beacons of light. We need our Change Agents. They are living proof that we can change and examples of where we need to go. Let's share their stories, back their efforts, join their teams, carry them forward, pick them up when they fall…protect them. We need them, and they need us. On dark days it seems nearly impossible to imagine…but we can change. We can change.