passion for politics
I tried to write poetry tonight. But I'm clouded with too many thoughts. I'm angry and disapointed. Not with my life, but with my country. Women's rights, healthcare, gay rights, education, all disolving in front of me. Its like I opened my eyes this morning and woke up in a different country. I read about photography students harassed for taking pictures of lockes and bridges AS PART OF HIS ASSIGNMENT. Did I mention that he's of Arabic descent? Or that, of all the people on the hill that day, he was the only one told that the pictures he was taking were illegal. All of this in the name of "homeland security". I read about women dying because the men who abused them killed them. I read about women who's babies are whisked away right after birth, and returned to them with at gut full of formula and serious nipple confusion. I read about families forced into bankruptcy and homelessness because of a sick child and no health insurance. I have head friends, deeply in love, watch each other die in a way they wouldn't have wanted. All because the law doesn't give the the right to make those decisions. Who's bright idea was it to hand the care of a gay man dying to the parents who disowned him? I read about teachers punished, even fired because their classes don't meet certain percentages on tests. Forget that many of thos classes have 30 or more children. Forget that sometiems half of those children barely speak english. Forget that five of them have ADD, or that 2 of them have other learning disabilities. Forget that not everyone gets to start at the same starting line. I hate this. I hate that I want children...and that I'm forced to make the decision to either hand off their care to someone else while their still doughy, or quit the job that my family needs. I hate that my right of free speech, something my country was founded on, is being ripped away before my very eyes. Our country was founded on freedom. Of religion, of speech, of press. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ben Franklin wrote that. This isn't even half of what I want to say tonight, but exhaustion and pain make sitting up harder than I thought. VOTE!! Its no longer a choice between the lesser evil. Its a choice against evil itself.