Resistance Is Necessary

Greetings and salutations. I am running for Congress because I am part of the resistance to corporate-occupied Washington, DC.

The 1 % have used the wealth they have gained in the last 34 years to buy themselves media, think tanks, lobbyists, congressmen and the Supreme Court, as well as the Presidency. They are using their ill-gotten gains to further increase their wealth.

Our country is under attack. Mountains are being blown up, waters are poisoned, topsoil is stripped for export and the earth beneath the soil is being fractured.

Our people are under attack. Millions are in prison, the police kick down doors and shoot dogs with impunity, millions have been thrown from their homes, and wages, pensions and the safety net are being reduced.

Our governing institutions are under attack. Equal justice is gone. The rule of law is ignored for the wealthy, while the poor are imprisoned for trivial offenses. The NSA spies on all of our communications, while Homeland Security gropes and radiates us, and we need ID to go just about anywhere. The Bill of Rights has been gutted. Even the Magna Carta has been overturned. The Executive Branch, which has abrogated the right to declare war from Congress decades ago, now gives itself the right to conduct world wide assassinations, including Americans. I am not one who believes that Americans have more rights than other nationalities, but the fact that they openly proclaim their intentions to kill American citizens without evidence, arrest or fair trial should give us all pause.

We are under attack, yet our trillion dollar military is not used to defend us. The president uses it as sort of a private hit squad, ordering assassinations and destabilizations using drones, bombs and death squads, to target people in other countries.

This is not going well.

There are many amazing people working on documenting the destruction of our institutions and our planet. Scientists measure the loss of ice, the rise of the oceans, and carefully document the loss of each species. Princeton researchers have just released a study which proves that the US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Others have come up with innovative ways to preserve our environment, to protect our ecosystem and to order our affairs in a more just and sustainable way.

Yet our public policy bears no resemblance to the wisdom prescribed by those who study, observe and prescribe. There is no public discussion of the way we wish to order our affairs. We are ruled by greedy oligarchs, who are stripping the country for parts, and jailing or killing anyone who gets in their way.

One of the values of the Green Party is Future Focus. This means that we consider the effect of our choices on future generations. When the frackers tell us that we have a few years of natural gas left, as long as we poison our water, air and topsoil and cause earthquakes to get to it, is this a wise decision? Is it worth destroying the basis of life in order to get a few more years of fossil fuels? Who would vote for such a thing, if such a thing were put to a referendrum, instead of decided by bought out politicians?

Americans insist that we love our children. Let's pretend that that is true, and ignore the fact that the US is one of only 3 countries in the world to not give paid maternity leave to new mothers, or the fact that we have the highest rate of child poverty of developed nations.

Our schools, while also under attack by the rich, now teach our children to share and care, and frown upon bullying and violence. These lessons are the opposite of what our children learn in the outer world.

Imagine a kindergarten in which one child buys the teacher and uses her to enforce his will. Only the children that he picks can play on the swingset. The others must sit and watch them. Snack time also, is only for the favored. The other children go hungry. The child bulldozes the ballfields so that he can see if there is a prize underneath them. He scatters garbage all around the school room and playground. The child organizes an attack on the third grade, because their teacher is “evil”.

This sounds absurd to us, because our public schools would never allow such behavior. Why then, should we allow such behavior in our grown up world?

Greens sound radical because we believe that the 1% should not be allowed to destroy our ecosystem for profit, because we believe that each person deserves the basics of life, and because we believe that we must preserve our ecosystem, not just for future generations, but for other species on this planet. We believe that the values we teach our children in school, and that adults learn in church, are values that we should live by. We believe in solving differences peacefully, which now is considered downright anti American. Ask yourself why? Why would the country which hosts the United Nations have gone so far down the military path that it seems too radical to consider diplomacy as an option?

It is time to fight back. It is time to stop the corporate occupation of Washington, DC. The only way we can save the country is to organize. Join the Green Party and help the resistance.