My Letter To Congress

I just wrote a big stinky letter about SOPA/PIPA to all of my government representatives. Like, really really. Sent it off to each of my three peeps: Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell and Jim McDermott. I wholeheartedly recommend you all do exactly the same thing to your reps Feel free to even use my exact letter below. Well, you may want to leave out the first part about being six years old…but steal the rest as much as you want! 🙂 DO IT NOW…because they’re supposed to vote on this issue on January 24th. That’s next week!

Dear [Congressperson],

Let me start off by letting you know that I am a career voter. I’m serious…there’s no other way to put it. When I was six years old I came home crying from school because I found out that our exercise in voting wasn’t real. See, I was PISSED OFF that my vote for McGovern didn’t count. Oh boy, was I pissed. I then counted the days until I could legally vote and ferociously absorbed everything about every political person and issue I could find. I was obsessed.

The result of this obsession is that I have voted in every single election since turning 18 years old in 1984. I enlisted friends that otherwise wouldn’t have given a shit to register to vote and vote with me. I have voted for YOU every time you have run since I moved to Washington state in 1989. And I PROMISE that I WILL NOT VOTE FOR YOU if you vote for SOPA or PIPA. PERIOD. I’m. Not. Kidding.

Furthermore, I’m working hard to get all my friends…in real life and online…to do exactly the same. Think about it. DO NOT LET SOPA/PIPA pass! I’m dead serious.

SOPA and PIPA would put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn’t being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won’t show up in major search engines. SOPA and PIPA would build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.

You all in Congress say it’s about trying to protect the rights of copyright owners, but the “cure” that SOPA and PIPA represent is worse than the disease. It’s target shooting with a shotgun. SOPA and PIPA are not the answer: they would fatally damage the free and open Internet.

I cannot stress this enough. Please watch this video. LISTEN to what he’s saying.

And let me say it one more time to be absolutely clear: I WILL NOT EVER VOTE FOR YOU EVER AGAIN IF YOU VOTE FOR THE BULLSHIT THAT IS SOPA/PIPA.

Thanks for reading this. I hope you read the whole thing. I don’t know anymore if you guys care about us little guys or not anymore. And that makes me sad. It makes me beyond sad.

Sincerely,

Dyanne R. Kessler
Career Voter and Passionate American

 

Knowledge is Power

I was beginning to wonder how it is that so many younger adults that I have come in contact with have no real concrete idea how the voting process works, and really don’t see what difference it makes if they vote  or not.

A particular 20-year old with whom I  am closely tied not only doesn’t believe in the system, but believes that any participation in our government processes, especially voting, condones the system and is therefore a large part of the problem.  No amount of my asking/pleading/imploring with her that, in order to change the system, you must work from within the system and that voting is the most effective way to do so, seems to have any influence on her point of view.  Oh no.  No faith in that.  No possible way can this be remotely the way it is.  I am one of the brainwashed…the well-intentioned but delusional.  We have currently decided to agree to disagree as the only thing we accomplish when we discuss such things is to become very uncomfortable and irritable and go days without talking.

Now, I don’t have school-age children and therefore may not be up-to-the-minute aware of what our schools are or are not teaching the future generations right now this year, but I do know that it’s a fact that lessons in civics and government no longer seem to be so much of a priority.  Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has even said,

“One unintended effect of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is intended to help fund teaching of science and math to young people, is that it has effectively squeezed out civics education because there is no testing for that anymore and no funding for that.”  (http://nssea.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/a-civics-lesson/)

This brings to my mind the very scary possibility that the omission of civics and other government- and history-based curriculum could actually be somewhat intentional on the part of our current administration. 

Why on Earth, you ask, would the current administration ever want to purposefully foster this kind of ignorance?   Well, let me tell you….Those in power want to stay in power, yes?  But those in power also want to play by their own rules usually.  This means that they would rather keep doing what they are doing, hoping no one gets the wiser that they are not really usually acting in the populous’ best interest.  They are working in THEIR best interest…and the best interests of their “friends” (aka the lobbyists). 

So, when it comes to the education of the American Masses and Future Generations, they don’t really want them/us to know exactly how the government works and what We The People can do to change it, if need be.  Gradual elimination of the necessary tools with which to make informed intelligent decisions while being active in local and national governments makes it more likely for the government to be able to pull the wool over our eyes.  Intelligent and active citizens in turn eventually become frustrated and/or apathetic, vote less, or at least less accurately, and bingo!  We’re on our way to even more blindly following our “leaders”.  We are lost.  We are used and abused.

And it has started already…

© 2008 D. Kessler