Congratulations on changing your life!

For fun, or to be annoying, or to enable my denial mechanisms I have decided to participate in the second Immunity Challenge. The question is "What would the world be like if you were in charge?"

Well, first off, I would not be in charge because I am a very falable, imperfect person. I also don't deal well with making decisions. Also, the world is a very big place. Putting me in charge would be disasterous because all of my viewpoints are coming from Western Middle Class American Society, which has nothing to do with, say... rural Russia or impoverished India. I would undoubtably impose my cultural norms on theirs and get a lot of things horribly wrong. So let's narrow down the world to the US.

Since I don't like or want power I'd appoint people to do my "job".

First off, I'd appoint Jeff Ott as President. Jeff Ott is a musician and political activist living in Berkely, California. He was homeless for ten years or so. He battled with drug and alcohol addictions and eventually overcame them. He has two children and he considers his political activism to be directly due to his concern about the kind of world his children will live in.

Ralph Nader would be appointed as attourney general. He's certainly qualified enough to be President, but I think he's more of a behind the scenes guy deep down. Plus, his law experience makes him a great candidate here.

I would appoint my Dad as Drug Tsar. He understands addiction and sobriety. He's about as hungry for power as I am so I'm sure he'd turn it down, in which case I'd appoint Jeff Ott's wife Cynthia Ott.

I'd appoint James Loewen as Secretary of Education. He wrote the amazing book "Lies My Teacher Told Me." I would also kindly ask him to make one of his first official acts be the issuance of his book to all high school students.

Noam Chomsky would be Secretary of State. I think he's thought and wrote more about US foreign policy than every Secretary of State that's still alive combined.

My good friend Ryan Mo Dee would become Secretary of Agriculture...that is if he'd accept the position instead of leaving for North Carolina to be a self-sufficient farmer. He might not take the job.

There are many more cabinet positions, but I'm sure you're getting bored with this so I'll move on. I'm a liberal piece of shit. You get the idea.

If I couldn't immediately cop out and turn the government over to these people I'd have plenty of reforms to enact.

1. Legalize all drugs. I don't do drugs. I don't like drugs. That is really irrelevant because regardless of my position people will continue to do them. Right now if someone is arrested for illegal drug possession they will probably go to a federal prison. Here they will continue to do drugs and have even less encouragement to stop. Once 1-40 years of their life are spent this way and they are released they enter a job market where no one will hire them because of their felony conviction. Since they've received no help or even encouragement to quit, they will probably continue to use drugs (or alcohol). Even if they are lucky enough to get a exploitative minimum wage job this won't be enough to support their drug habit and they will probably turn to crime to sedate themselves, thus restarting the cycle. Under the system we have, society is basically saying from the moment you experiment with a drug you are fucked and we no longer care about you for the rest of your life. After legalizing drugs and freeing up the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars that was spent on the drug war, we'll have more than enough money for excellent treatment centers and programs to keep people from starting drugs in the first place. Not only that, but gangs and drug related violence will almost disappear. Have you ever heard of legal liquor store owners feeling it necessary to do drive by's on their competion? Oh, and the government would also issue a heartfelt public apology for injecting drugs into the black community in the 60s to sedate the civil rights movement.

2. Reform the school system and curriculum.Once drugs are legalized, we can tax them. The billions of dollars in tax revenue can go directly into public education. It needs the money. I don't have an end all solution to education because I'm only 19 and I don't know everything. I have a few suggestions for curriculum changes. Schools should focus more on life skills than information that is often useless to the majority of Americans. While higher level algebra and Europeon Literature are really pretty interesting, if someone is going to go into a field that needs that they could study it in college. Instead high schools could have courses on how to grow (and cook) food, how to make clothes, how to build a house, etc. Right now our generation is under the delusion that these are no longer skills we need because our needs are taken care of by corporations like Safeway and Exxon and Coca Cola and (Fill in the Blank) Realters. If we only spend our life doing tasks that are often meaningless to us and leave us empty, these companies will provide us with just enough entertainment and excess to sedate ourselves.

Every grade should have government courses that center around open debate about what's going on in current issues (tailored to that grade level). These courses should also cover things like how to run for office, how to organize a protest, and what a kid's legal rights are. History courses should become more accurate (at the expense of the maintenence of the myth that the US has an unblemished, moral past). All elementary schools should have gardens that grow both flowers and some of the food that is served to them in the cafeteria. Kids will be eager to get out of the building (my 10 year old sister doesn't even get a regular recess now), they'll get a sense of accomplishment from working on something that they can see the useful results of, and kids will learn to love the natural earth. Wow, that would be really nice.

3. Urban Renewal. All cities should become more bike friendly by making bike paths and safe places to lock up your bike inside buildings. Tax cuts should be provided to those that don't own and operate cars. Vacant lots and abandoned buildings should be torn up to make public gardens that are the shared responsibility of the neighborhood. I've read stories about this, and it works amazingly well in neighborhoods like inner city Chicago.

Public spaces should be made public again. This means it can't be sold to advertisers and space should be made available for public art. The public airwaves should be made public again. If a community decides it wants to sell some of its airwaves to the companies that now make radio stations, then the money from that will go into equipment for many other public radio stations. The same goes with television airwaves.

4. Civic Reforms. Election day should be a national holiday. On days of local elections people should be given an hour or two off of work to vote as well. The National and state budgets should be printed in plain language once a year in the newspaper and posted online so that people can REALLY see what their money is spent on. I mean, my god, a few years ago we had separate installments included in most newspapers with exact printouts of every sexual act the president preformed but we had no idea how much money we lost on dead end military projects. Corporations should no longer be able to make political contributions, because corporations will no longer be recognized as having the same rights as a human being. duh. I don't know why they ever were.

There's more. There's so so much more, but I'm not going to go on. This is getting too disheartening wishing for all these things and thinking about how far we are from them. It makes me feel like a literal piece of crap that theorizes all the day away.

For fun, or to be annoying, or to enable my denial mechanisms I have decided to participate in the second Immunity Challenge. The question is "What would the world be like if you were in charge?" Well, first off, I would not be in charge because I am a very falable, imperfect person. I also don't deal well with making decisions. Also, the world is a very big place. Putting me in charge would be disasterous because all of my viewpoints are coming from Western Middle Class American Society, which has nothing to do with, say... rural Russia or impoverished India. I would undoubtably impose my cultural norms on theirs and get a lot of things horribly wrong. So let's narrow down the world to the US. Since I don't like or want power I'd appoint people to do my "job". First off, I'd appoint Jeff Ott as President. Jeff Ott is a musician and political activist living in Berkely, California. He was homeless for ten years or so. He battled with drug and alcohol addictions and eventually overcame them. He has two children and he considers his political activism to be directly due to his concern about the kind of world his children will live in. Ralph Nader would be appointed as attourney general. He's certainly qualified enough to be President, but I think he's more of a behind the scenes guy deep down. Plus, his law experience makes him a great candidate here. I would appoint my Dad as Drug Tsar. He understands addiction and sobriety. He's about as hungry for power as I am so I'm sure he'd turn it down, in which case I'd appoint Jeff Ott's wife Cynthia Ott. I'd appoint James Loewen as Secretary of Education. He wrote the amazing book "Lies My Teacher Told Me." I would also kindly ask him to make one of his first official acts be the issuance of his book to all high school students. Noam Chomsky would be Secretary of State. I think he's thought and wrote more about US foreign policy than every Secretary of State that's still alive combined. My good friend Ryan Mo Dee would become Secretary of Agriculture...that is if he'd accept the position instead of leaving for North Carolina to be a self-sufficient farmer. He might not take the job. There are many more cabinet positions, but I'm sure you're getting bored with this so I'll move on. I'm a liberal piece of shit. You get the idea. If I couldn't immediately cop out and turn the government over to these people I'd have plenty of reforms to enact. 1. Legalize all drugs. I don't do drugs. I don't like drugs. That is really irrelevant because regardless of my position people will continue to do them. Right now if someone is arrested for illegal drug possession they will probably go to a federal prison. Here they will continue to do drugs and have even less encouragement to stop. Once 1-40 years of their life are spent this way and they are released they enter a job market where no one will hire them because of their felony conviction. Since they've received no help or even encouragement to quit, they will probably continue to use drugs (or alcohol). Even if they are lucky enough to get a exploitative minimum wage job this won't be enough to support their drug habit and they will probably turn to crime to sedate themselves, thus restarting the cycle. Under the system we have, society is basically saying from the moment you experiment with a drug you are fucked and we no longer care about you for the rest of your life. After legalizing drugs and freeing up the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars that was spent on the drug war, we'll have more than enough money for excellent treatment centers and programs to keep people from starting drugs in the first place. Not only that, but gangs and drug related violence will almost disappear. Have you ever heard of legal liquor store owners feeling it necessary to do drive by's on their competion? Oh, and the government would also issue a heartfelt public apology for injecting drugs into the black community in the 60s to sedate the civil rights movement. 2. Reform the school system and curriculum.Once drugs are legalized, we can tax them. The billions of dollars in tax revenue can go directly into public education. It needs the money. I don't have an end all solution to education because I'm only 19 and I don't know everything. I have a few suggestions for curriculum changes. Schools should focus more on life skills than information that is often useless to the majority of Americans. While higher level algebra and Europeon Literature are really pretty interesting, if someone is going to go into a field that needs that they could study it in college. Instead high schools could have courses on how to grow (and cook) food, how to make clothes, how to build a house, etc. Right now our generation is under the delusion that these are no longer skills we need because our needs are taken care of by corporations like Safeway and Exxon and Coca Cola and (Fill in the Blank) Realters. If we only spend our life doing tasks that are often meaningless to us and leave us empty, these companies will provide us with just enough entertainment and excess to sedate ourselves. Every grade should have government courses that center around open debate about what's going on in current issues (tailored to that grade level). These courses should also cover things like how to run for office, how to organize a protest, and what a kid's legal rights are. History courses should become more accurate (at the expense of the maintenence of the myth that the US has an unblemished, moral past). All elementary schools should have gardens that grow both flowers and some of the food that is served to them in the cafeteria. Kids will be eager to get out of the building (my 10 year old sister doesn't even get a regular recess now), they'll get a sense of accomplishment from working on something that they can see the useful results of, and kids will learn to love the natural earth. Wow, that would be really nice. 3. Urban Renewal. All cities should become more bike friendly by making bike paths and safe places to lock up your bike inside buildings. Tax cuts should be provided to those that don't own and operate cars. Vacant lots and abandoned buildings should be torn up to make public gardens that are the shared responsibility of the neighborhood. I've read stories about this, and it works amazingly well in neighborhoods like inner city Chicago. Public spaces should be made public again. This means it can't be sold to advertisers and space should be made available for public art. The public airwaves should be made public again. If a community decides it wants to sell some of its airwaves to the companies that now make radio stations, then the money from that will go into equipment for many other public radio stations. The same goes with television airwaves. 4. Civic Reforms. Election day should be a national holiday. On days of local elections people should be given an hour or two off of work to vote as well. The National and state budgets should be printed in plain language once a year in the newspaper and posted online so that people can REALLY see what their money is spent on. I mean, my god, a few years ago we had separate installments included in most newspapers with exact printouts of every sexual act the president preformed but we had no idea how much money we lost on dead end military projects. Corporations should no longer be able to make political contributions, because corporations will no longer be recognized as having the same rights as a human being. duh. I don't know why they ever were. There's more. There's so so much more, but I'm not going to go on. This is getting too disheartening wishing for all these things and thinking about how far we are from them. It makes me feel like a literal piece of crap that theorizes all the day away.
My AIM changed to gingermissippy for now. ginger@mosquitoinc.org