See this film. Take your kids. Tell your friends. End of story. My wife and I saw it today and I for one was stunned - and scared. And pissed.
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So in the Fall of 1989 Ross Perot went on some pundit news commentary TV show and mocked the elder President Bush in the following fashion: "New world order, what is a new world order? I'll give anyone a million dollars if they can describe to me what is the new world order." To my dismay or disadvantage I do not have a million dollars to spare (nor did I run for president and provide those who follow presidential elections with endless entertainment in the years that followed this brilliant utterance). I can however wager 1K with anyone who bites the following lure - Can you script a conceivable scenario via which USA military involvement in Iraq or Syria, present or future, bends the vector in that region positively by anybody's terms? Doubt it; but I'll read and retain your comments nonetheless and of course payout if you score. We can even have a vote by readers!
So what has been learned here 11/4/14? I would argue what we have is a hybrid spasm of demagogic ignorant reflex and the blind application of the Abeline Paradox. People vote against their own welfare and that of their children? Here in Oregon now we can buy marijuana, OK- but undocumented workers who drive to work are still denied today a permit to do so. I'd rather get a ticket for possessing a joint than sanction the arrest of an agricultural worker driving w/o documents to his or her job which puts "legal" crops on market shelves. How much moral dissonance can one tolerate.
To appropriate out of context an appropriate phrase by Bill Cosby = COME ON PEOPLE! Read the page via link below and vote for your denied civil liberties today, OK? Let's be done with "Law And Order" Legislators, Governors, DAs, and Judges. If you have a chance to nix a helmet law please do that too if only as a favor to me.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/peekaboo-i-see-you-government-uses-authority-meant-terrorism-other-uses In this section of the Pacific NorthWest you can sue the state unsuccessfully to get yourself executed off death row but still kill yourself legally if you consider suicide as your last civilian move. Please don't move here unless you need to stay an execution warrant or plan an act of euthanasia -Portland is getting crowded enough already and the rest of Oregon isn't looking for newcomers .
For those of you who are fortunate enough to have an actually protected right to vote, I hope on November 4th you will consider the interests of those in your community who don't get to weigh in that Tuesday. Whether their lack of franchise is a function of criminal conviction, non-citizen status, or the application hostile voter-ID laws and poll-place interference - these mostly non-whte not-wealthy members of society deserve to have their welfare considered by those of us essentially "self-coverning" them. Incarcerated people can't vote to change sentencing and prison policy at either a State or Federal level. In fact many states prevent Felons who have served their time from voting to influence the way police and the justice system set up the children living in their homes to move through the school-to-prison pipeline. 16 year olds don't get to vote for better funding for the schools they attend or in favor of candidates who come to govern their schools, set their car insurance rates, or dictate how they are treated when the police pull them over or stop them on the street. Non-natualized immigrants, those here legally as well as the undocumented, have no sway on immigration policy nor on laws that proscribe what public benefits to which they might be entitled. This is more than picking who runs cities, state Capitols or who makes and enforces State and Federal laws. Many states allow voters to pass laws by referendum - in fact this year many jurisdictions are voting on minimum wage initiatives and bond issues that will disproportionally affect poor people and their kids, people of color and people relegated to the bottom of the labor ladder due to their criminal record: just the folks who make up the bulk of the sub-sector of our society who don't get to vote. On Tuesday those of us legally registered to vote in Oregon will have the opportunity to create a right for undocumented immigrants in the state to apply for a driver's license. Most the arguments offered by supporters of this Measure 88 to persuade those who can vote to do so in favor of passage are spun in the form of public safety concerns regarding roads and the policing of undocumented residents across the state. I'm voting Yes on 88 with my thoughts firmly focused on the positive effects obtention of a driver's license will have on the lives of people who will get one if the law is passed. It's a small example, but an example nonetheless, that when we vote we can aim to win victories in the lives of others - not only in our own.
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AuthorJon Amsterdam is a Lawyer, Educator, Community Organizer and National Service Innovator who directs Communities Without Borders, a non profit organization he founded in 1996. Archives
January 2021
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