Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.
~ Pete Seeger

Monday, September 29, 2008

A Letter to the Next President

Somehow I found this website where you can write a letter to the next president. Here's mine:


You've inherited a mess, and I don't envy you the job of cleaning it up.

- You'll hear a lot about how we need to be strong, we need more money for the military. Yet our military spending already amounts to 1/2 of the entire world's military budget. You're going to need a lot more money to solve some of the problems the Bush Administration has caused. Please, do what you can to cut the military budget $300 billion or so. We'll still have the biggest, strongest, best trained military in the world.

- In the last eight years our nation has invaded another without cause. We have adopted torture as a means of dealing with our enemies. Most recently, we've been rushed to spend $700 billion bailing out extremely rich folks on Wall Street. All of the these are acts of cowardice unfit for a free people. Please, end the politics of fear.

- For almost 30 years we've cut taxes on the wealthy and deregulated the media and the market to allow a vast transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich. Please, end the Republican Reverse-Robin-Hood economic policy. Tax the rich, and break up media conglomerates. Ensure the freedom of the press by making it illegal for a corporation to own a media outlet, or for anyone to sit on the boards of both a media company and a non-media company.

- Our nation has been disgraced by the blatant violation of law by the current administration, including violations of international law, the Geneva Convention, and national law. Please restore the rule of law to our nation and our government. Obey the laws we have, and prosecute those who have violated them so blatantly, even though it means putting a former president and vice president on the dock.

Good luck, and best wishes.

Okay, I've blogged enough about politics for awhile. I'll try to get back on track with some entries that are more real in the near future.

No comments:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
~Helen Keller

Reading List for Information about Transpeople

  • Becoming a Visible Man, by Jamison Green
  • Conundrum, by Jan Morris
  • Gender Outlaw, by Kate Bornstein
  • My Husband Betty, by Helen Boyd
  • Right Side Out, by Annah Moore
  • She's Not There, by Jennifer Boylan
  • The Riddle of Gender, by Deborah Rudacille
  • Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transgender Emergence, by Arlene Istar Lev
  • Transgender Warriors, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transition and Beyond, by Reid Vanderburgh
  • True Selves, by Mildred Brown
  • What Becomes You, by Aaron Link Raz and Hilda Raz
  • Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men's hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His - the Christ's, our
Beloved's.
~Hafiz