From a story on All Things Considered:
Since the 2000 elections, the number of young Americans going to the polls has increased steadily. This year is no different: In some states, double and triple the number of voters younger than 30 have turned out for primaries, compared with 2006. But another trend is also emerging: the widening voting gap between youth enrolled in college and their non-student peers.
I still haven’t heard back about my application to Indiana’s state-subsidised health insurance, but I heard a story on Morning Edition this morning about a Massachusetts law that requires all state residents to have health insurance or face a tax penalty. There is a plan in place to make health insurance more accessible to the uninsured and to subsidize the costs of insurance for people below 3x the poverty level. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supports an “individual mandate” similar to the Massachusetts plan.
One of the yard sign designs that Chiara and I submitted for the Your Campaign Here project, titled Keep Out All That I Fear was selected for production and distribution.
Update: The IDS did a very, very short story on the Your Campaign Here project and Chiara was interviewed:
The first winning sign was a collaboration of two artists, Chiara Galimberti and Geoffrey Hing. Galimberti, an Italian native, said since she is not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible to vote, the contest was a chance for her to participate in the campaign.
“Just seeing all the debate, I thought it was a strong avenue for politics without being a part of it,†Galimberti said. “I’m an outsider, but I still have strong political ideas.â€
Link to IDS article.Update: I saw this minimalist campaign sign on Boing Boing:
Link to Boing Boing post about the sign.
According to a Jan. 2 ACLU news release from the ACLU, the discussion will contain a “panel consisting of specialists on central aspects of the current national debate over immigration to the United States and their rights and responsibilities.â€
From a Yahoo! news article:
“By turning off lights and also electrical gadgets that are in stand-by mode, “citizens, the media and decision-makers will get the message about energy waste and the urgent need for action,” the Alliance for the Planet said on Friday.â€
The Alliance for the Planet is an umbrella of about 50 green associations, including the local branches of Greenpeace and WWF, and professional organisations connected with the environment.
The UN’s paramount scientific authority on climate change meets in Paris from January 29 to February 1 to hammer out the first volume of a long-awaited report on the state of global warming today.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely expected to declare that climate change is already on the march, many years sooner than expected, and the consequences for humans and biodiversity could be dire.â€
Link to the article on turning off lights
Link to Climate Crisis Coalition website with more info on climate change
Crafting Community: An Evening of Knitting and/or Letter Writing
Friday, December 22
Boxcar Books and Community Center [310A S. Washington St.]
7-9pm
Bloomington is changing in terms of the structural landscape of the city, the demographics of it’s inhabitants, and the development and political decisions that face the community. Despite opportunities for public review, many of the decisions being made that affect the community as a whole, feel completely out of the hands of most people. We grumble, gossip, and debate but do our words and concerns change anything?
The idea is simple – people can get together around a simple activity like knitting and talk about their perceptions, feelings, and ideas about the things that are affecting us as we live in Bloomington. We can share information about the things that are happening around us and use our shared information and perspective to solidify our individual feelings and opinions. Then, through writing letters to the editors of local media, politicians, city officials, developers, and business owners, we can share our voices with those who make sweeping decisions around the city of Bloomington. We hope that our voices can help shape the decisions being made, but if they can’t, at least no one can claim that the decisions were made ignorant of the impact that they would have on the city’s residents.
I’m thinking that this Friday’s topic of letter writing will be the closing of Ladyman’s Cafe and the plans for Finelight’s development of the cafe’s former location. Please bring any news articles, planning documents, press releases or other information that you would like to share with others.
This event is open to everyone in the Bloomington community. You can come to knit, to write letters, or just hang out. Hopefully we can all take a few moments to let the rants and conversations many have had over the past few weeks coalesce and turn them into clear expressions of anger, frustration, or hope that can be shared with others in Bloomington.
Take care,
Geoff
Here’s a good interview with Spoons from a DC paper. I think it’s human and compelling and I hope Defiance, Ohio interviews sometimes come off this nice.
EXPRESS: Did you get to talk to [NOFX singer/Fat Wreck Chords chief] Fat Mike when you saw him at the Goons’ show?
SPOONBOY: No. I think he does really bad things with punk. I really don’t like Fat Wreck Chords or NOFX … for years and years Fat Wreck Chords was really apolitical, poppy and accessible and it became the face of punk, which is [a shame] because for me it’s a lot more of a politicized idea.More recently, since Bush was elected, it’s gotten a lot more politicized but it’s liberal politics that don’t get to the root of it. I don’t feel like Rock Against Bush makes any sense when Bush is just the symptom of systemic problems.Fat Mike did the Punk Voter thing, but it’s just a recruiting campaign to get punk kids to vote Democrat. For me, punk is about rejecting power structures and having Punk Voter or Rock Against Bush is surrendering your power to these people. They’re Democrats, they’re a little to the left of Bush, but it’s still like, “Work for the system, surrender your power to these people.” It doesn’t seem punk to me. Punk Voter seems like an oxymoron.
EXPRESS: Does the rest of the band have the same politics?
SPOONBOY: Bepstein has different politics. I don’t believe in God; he’s pretty into Judaism. He thinks government is a good thing. More or less he wants to live the lifestyle he grew up in: suburban upper-middle class. That’s a pretty different from my point of view. But two people should be able to get along regardless of their politics as long as they’re not jerks.
counter-innauguration protest. Washington, DC. January 2005.
Checkpoint. Hebron. March 2K6.
So these are two different groups of people, both trying to get through checkpoints. One is trying to go to school. I’m not sure what we planned to do if we made it through the checkpoint in DC. I wish I could come to some conclusion, but I think that there’s something in all of this, in considering the huge gap in reality between members of a black block in DC and school children in Israel/Palestine. I guess some would say that the we were acting in solidarity with those Palestinian students when we were in the streets in DC. And I guess I’m trying to think about the reality of that statement, and if there isn’t any, how do people in the US act in solidarity with those in Palestine or [insert people in far-away country subject to US-supported oppression]?
Lord Acton once said, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power absolutely.” He could have gone on to say “and by the way, powerlessness also corrupts, and absolute powerlessness absolutely.” That is, people who are opposing the government and feel they are getting no place tend towards bitterness, tend toward hatred. They fight national righteousness with personal self-righteousness. And, they become … Well, let me put it this way. It seems to me that if you love the good, you have to hate evil, or you’re sentimental. But if you hate evil more than you love the good, you become a damn good hater.
– Rev. William Sloane Coffin on NPR’s Fresh Air (Link)
This quote is 2:50 into the show. I might want to use this for STFU.