A Work in Progress

Welcome to my Website

This website has been created as a place to share my interests with people. My main interest is politics. I'm a

ocialist and I organize around many different issues. I am involved in anti-war organizing, including the nation-wide fight to kick recruiters off of high school and college campuses. I've also organized for the right to equal marriage for gay and lesbian couples. All people deserve civil rights, including the right to marry, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. It's important for me to fight against police brutality, the death penalty, and the outrages of the criminal justice system. The United States has a greater percentage of it's population behind bars than any other country in the world, and while corporate criminals can steal millions and get a slap on the wrist, poor (usually minority) men, and increasingly women, can be locked up for life for petty drug crimes and small-time theft. I'm also a fighter for women's rights, including the right to Abortion. Until women can control their bodies and their reproduction, they will never be equal members of society. I believe in open borders for all people, immigrant and native-born. No human being is illegal, and people should be free to live and travel wherever they choose.

Politics

War

The war in Iraq and the "War on Terror" are the two most crucial political issues of our time. Bush and his cronies are bombing and killing innocent civilians and illegally occupying a sovereign nation. At the same time the government is spending over $200 billion on it's war for oil and empire, it's prosecuting a war on the people at home in the United States. Bush is claiming that there's no money left for social programs, he wants to privatize Social Security, and even wants to decrease Veteran's benefits. This war (like all wars) is not being waged in the interest of "security" or "fighting terrorism" regardless of the lies told by the government and the media. The war is not about bringing freedom and liberation to the people of Iraq. The purpose of this war is to steal Iraqi resources, namely oil, and to build the American Empire so large that no strategic competitor can emerge to challenge the power of the United States. I stand in Solidarity with the people of Iraq, who have the right to resist foreign domination.

Poverty

Billions of people around the world live on less than $2.00 a day. Even in the United States there are many people who can't afford to feed their families, don't have health care (including yours truly), and are sinking further into debt. For many people, it seems like we have to work harder and harder just to make ends meet. Society teaches us that if we just try hard enough, we too can become rich and famous. But this implies that for the billions of people in poverty, they just haven't worked hard enough to succeed. Well, anyone who's worked for a paycheck knows that some of the hardest working people make the least money, and only a few people can actually break through to real wealth and influence, while the rest of us are actually doing worse than the previous generation. The reality is that the people who own and control the wealth of our society are rich, not because of their cleverness or hard work, but because they exploit the labor of the rest of us.

Oppression

There are many types of oppression to fight against, here and around the world. Racism is the most divisive issue in the United States. The legacy of slavery means that blacks, despite legal equality, are constantly discriminated against and treated as second-class citizens. Whether in the (in)justice system, education, or employment, people of color get the short end of the stick. Oppression against women is also a problem in society. Women struggle for the right to control their bodies, for pay equity, and against sexual harassment and objectification. Oppression against gays and lesbians has become more obvious with the controversy surrounding same-sex marriage, which is a civil rights issue. It is my belief that white people don't benefit from the oppression of blacks, men don't benefit from the oppression of women, and straight people don't benefit from the oppression of gay people. The most effective way to fight inequality and discrimination is through working together across race/sex/gender lines.

Socialism

Socialism, as I understand it, is the simple idea that the people who actually do the work of society have the ability to decide collectively how to organize that work. For my workplace (which is a bar) that would mean that the cooks would decide what food to prepare and serve and the bartenders would design the drinks, and we wouldn't need owners or managers telling us how to do our jobs, since we really know better than them anyway! All of society is organized into the system of capitalism. In this system, the driving force is profit, rather than human needs. This is why there is such a wealth disparity in the world, why the executives of Enron and WorldCom can bail out with millions of dollars in golden parachutes while the retirees that gave decades of their lives to these companies can have their pensions raided and destroyed. Socialism is actual direct democracy rather than the elaborate fraud of voting once every four years for Tweedle-dee or Tweedle-dum

. Of course, the people in power will not hand it over to the rest of us without a fight. To see society organized in a way that benefits the vast majority of people, it will be necessary to overturn the existing structure through revolution. This is how bourgeois democracy succeeded in replacing monarchies all over the world, and revolution (waged by the working class -- the vast majority of the population) is ultimately the only way we can totally get rid of war, poverty, oppression, and exploitation, and make society work in the interest of everyone.

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