{"id":592,"date":"2004-07-08T12:09:28","date_gmt":"2004-07-08T17:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2004\/07\/08\/108930662859824236\/"},"modified":"2004-07-08T12:09:28","modified_gmt":"2004-07-08T17:09:28","slug":"108930662859824236","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2004\/07\/08\/108930662859824236\/","title":{"rendered":"108930662859824236"},"content":{"rendered":"

ryan and my speech at the punk town meeting<\/strong><\/p>\n

Voting as a \u201cpunk\u201d priority<\/p>\n

2000 was the first year that i thought seriously about voting. but, i shared a viewpoint with many many americans that was basically one of
\napathy. i knew no one could possibly win who would in any way reflect my
\nfeelings or intentions. sure it was interesting to see a somewhat serious
\ngreen party candidate.. but there was really no hope for election. in the
\nend, i didn’t vote, because i decided i could do little for my cause, i
\nregret that. i was in india near the time of the election. something
\nhappened there that shocked me… an older woman, in an extremely small
\nvillage close to pakistan, came up to me crying.. asking me if i was an
\namerican and how i could allow such a thing to happen.. she was pulling on
\nmy arms and my shirt, sobbing and asking how bush could have won. i was
\ntaken back. it made me realize that though to some of us it’s comparing
\napples to apples, the outcome of elections can make a greater impact on a
\nglobal community then i ever expected. If you tell me that presidents,
\nDemocrat and Republican, right-leaning and left-leaning have all made
\nhorrible policy decisions, I will be the first to agree with you. If you
\ntell me that from a policy standpoint, John Kerry is every bit as bad (if
\nnot worse) than George W. Bush, I\u2019ll agree with that too. But If you tell me that any of that means that this election, or elections in general, don\u2019t matter or that I shouldn\u2019t be concerned with them, or that I shouldn\u2019t participate in them \u2013 that, I don\u2019t agree with.<\/p>\n

in April of 2001, i was horribly alarmed by something i saw and heard and it sticks in my mind. that was when the US spy plane was being detained by
\nchina for flying in illegal airspace and killing a chinese pilot. Bush
\nformally announced that the USA is not in the habit of apology. though a
\nformal apology was eventually produced for china.. this idea terrified me.
\ni couldn’t believe it, is this not a simple rule we teach to children? to
\napologize. this term has been nothing but a continuation of this disgusting
\ncowboy attitude. I think that removing the Bush administration from office
\nis, in the next six months, the single most important political objective.
\nit\u2019s not because his policies suck, US policy sucks. It\u2019s because the
\nATTITUDES that they express and the attitudes that they validates in people
\nare, to be put simply, shitty. They\u2019re mean spirited, and they\u2019re out of
\ntouch with the reality of so many people\u2019s lives, and they\u2019re the polar
\nopposite of everything that I find to be good or decent or important or
\nexciting about people or community or living life.<\/p>\n

what’s worse, these attitudes trickle down. recently, i was driving to
\nvisit my family in wisconsin and had to stop my car because something on the radio made me so upset. it was during the time that the prison injustices in iraq were taking place and the ever so popular american beheading was all over the internet. over and over on the show i heard people, americans, throw around the phrase “those pesky geneva conventions” indicating that these basic rules for how to treat humans.. were stopping us from our battle on terror. i couldn’t believe this. i knew things in my country had gone too far, but this, to me, was a whole new level<\/p>\n

I read in the newspaper the other day, a quotation that for me, embodies the things that I find so frightening about these attitudes. Eric Bost, Bush\u2019s Agriculture Department undersecretary for food and nutrition service (which is the part of the government that coordinates things like food stamp programs, school lunch programs, and other programs that provide food to children and low-income people said, In response to reports which indicate that more and more Americans are in need of assistance when it comes to having enough food to eat, \u201cThere\u2019s a bump, but how much of that is due to people taking the easy way out?\u201d<\/p>\n

I think that Bush needs to be voted out of office not because his
\nsuccessor\u2019s policies will make life better for hungry Americans or the
\npeople in Iraq or workers in the third world or people who want to marry
\nothers of the same sex or women who want to get abortions. but, because
\nhis attitudes stand in the way of progress of any kind at any level. I
\nthink that the attitudes that people in any given community hold have a huge effect on the success of direct action like Food Not Bombs or a community institution like Mother Hubbard\u2019s Cupboard, a food pantry which proceeds from this fest will benefit. When I think of things being \u201cbetter\u201d in this world, I feel like it takes more than just the handful of kids who serve food every week or the volunteers who give their time to community
\ninstitutions. It takes any given person having just a little bit more
\nawareness and concern for the people around them. And yeah, of course that
\nmeans that we should all still talk to our friends, families, and co-workers about these things. Of course we should still put up flyers and organize events and stand with placards on street corners. But just as those things send a message on a personal or community level, a message needs to be sent at a global level as well. I think that voting the Bush administration out of office can help to begin to send the message that it\u2019s attitudes won\u2019t be tolerated and that people in general are at least willing to have a different mindset towards political and social issues than the current one. but, more than anything, that what has happened these last four years is not OK with americans.<\/p>\n

-Geoff Hing and Ryan Woods<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ryan and my speech at the punk town meeting Voting as a \u201cpunk\u201d priority 2000 was the first year that i thought seriously about voting. but, i shared a viewpoint with many many americans that was basically one of apathy. i knew no one could possibly win who would in any way reflect my feelings… Continue reading 108930662859824236<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-9y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}