This is a really good documentary.
 

I can understand why people say the two-party system does not work.  But that’s also a cop-out.  We make up the parties.  Their money wouldn’t mean anything if we weren’t voting for them and actually WORKING for them–physically, hourly working for them–this fundraising, marketing monstrosity–and voting for them, of course.

I don’t want to feel like the party is using me. I’d like to use the party.  To educate voters, help people to become involved in causes they care about, give people a voice–make it easier for people to participate.  I try to do as much as I can in various ways because I have time and money.  But not long ago I had none of that. I had no time and no money, and a not a lot of information about what was going on.  I understood that people were making decisions for me, and that most of those people did not care about any of us. That’s the situation we’re in right now, and the people who are now in the situation I was in, then–our future of America–are kept out of the loop and almost utterly silenced.  By poverty, by prison, or by the enormous social and economic pressure we put on people to just shut the fuck up.

Because of the situation I am in now, I am immune to that pressure.  I am privileged, and I am lucky to be in this position, and I feel an enormous sense of responsibility to the people who are struggling and suffering.  I don’t complain about “apathy,” and I try not complain about or mock ignorance, because everyone is ignorant until they learn things–willful ignorance, I have a big problem.  “Apathy,” probably more than anything else is DESPAIR.  It’s despair!  Imagine it!  Imagine being a woman in a state where DEMOCRATIC candidates feel it’s politically expedient to vote against women’s basic human rights!  Imagine living in state whose legislature proclaims that homosexual unions are unnatural!  Imagine being a young man kicked out of high school for smelling like weed and cursing.  What are you going to do, now?  Imagine being a single mother in a nation who is more interested in finding you husband than in ensuring you get equal pay and that your child gets quality education and safe daycare.  Imagine sitting in JAIL RIGHT NOW because you got busted with a bag of weed or any other drug.  Imagine being the mother of a child in prison, or the child or a mother in prison.  Please try to imagine it–because these people and many others are being SILENCED every day–by prison, by poverty, by sexism and racism.  And “we” have nothing useful to discuss while these voices are absent from our discourse.  We MUST WORK to fix this problem.  We have to do it. There is no leader and no entity in existence who is going to get us out of this mess.  The PEOPLE of this state and this  nation must come together, right now!

We need good leaders, like Constance N. Johnson, who is ceaselessly and amazingly patiently serving the people of Oklahoma AND the Democratic platform, while many of her colleagues, certainly Randy Bass, for instance, not only fail to participate, but actively work against her efforts and OUR interests.  Against US.

I think we should work for ballot access reform because the two-party system in this state is turning into a one party system.  Liberals and progressives need people to vote for, and libertarians too.  We also need to legalize marijuana. It’s stupid that it has taken us so long to do it.

We need another open mic. A stage and a mic.  An open mic let’s you speak, and it makes you listen.  We need people to talk about things.  That’s how we’re going to learn and that’s also how we’re going to find the leaders we need.  We need dialogue, and I can tell you from experience that if you put a mic on a stage, people will come and speak into it.  We must communicate with each other.  We must stop relying on corporate-owned media and corporate-owned politicians to find solutions to the problems we face because a lot of them do not know or care what problems we face. It’s no use just getting angry at them.  We need to get together.  Right now.

I intend to start another open mic especially for politics and social issues. I will ask the leaders of all local political parties to choose one speaker for each open mic. If you know Republicans or Libertarians or Tea Party members who aren’t absolute dick heads, send them my way because I want balance from the start. If they won’t come, it’s because they are full of shit, and they know it.  I’ll speak for them.  It’s going to take me a minute to get it together. In the meantime there’s the Free Speech Open Mic on Tuesdays.

Anyway, watch this documentary if you want to. It’s a very balanced, objective and intelligent look at just one of the flaws in our system: