“Life without knowledge is like death in disguise” –Talib Kweli
“Vote or Die!”–P.Diddy
Vote or Die. Vote or Die? I don’t want to die! But why should I vote? What am I voting for? These are the questions our youth should ask the many hip-hop moguls that are making voting “fashionable” for our youth and our hip-hop generation. As P. Diddy stands before us with a campaign that tells his audience to “Vote or Die” our youth follow Sean Combs lead and register to vote and will hopefully turn out in large numbers for the most important election of our generation, possibly ever. It’s everywhere you look. Turn on the TV and you get bombarded with statistics that show how relevant every culture is to this election. The radio tells you to vote and “be heard.” Go outside and there are a bunch of people looking just like you and me trying to get you to register to vote. Now even the clothes you wear make the statement to “Vote or Die.” But does anybody truly understand what we are voting for?
“I’m not voting simply because I don’t want to waste my vote” –anonymous
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This election is bigger than many of us know. Unfortunately the platform that “Vote or Die” and many other people stand upon is one that deals with the war in Iraq. We know that Bush has done his best to fuck up our country, but do we understand that the war is more of a smoke screen for the larger problems in America? While everyone is giving us the rah rah about getting out to vote, it is more important to educate the people on what it is they are casting their ever important vote for. It’s great that we will hopefully mobilize the important demographic of hip-hop culture to fill up the polls and hopefully get Bush out of office. But a wayward bullet can eventually hurt more than it can harm.
November 3rd 2004, Kerry Wins! But then what? Even though John Kerry has outlined a potentially good plan for America (and a plan by all means cannot be any worse than what Bush has offered), what if Kerry doesn’t follow through with his plans. What if Kerry implements a draft (yes for those of you that do not know there is the possibility of a draft if Bush stays in office and we continue to lose valuable lives in Iraq)? What if we see absolutely no results from Kerry (not too farfetched either)? What if? There are so many things to know about this election and if, for some reason, John Kerry doesn’t follow through with his lofty promises (not a forgone conclusion) we have to still prepare and educate ourselves. But try this scenario, November 3rd 2004…Bush wins! Then what? Do we pout and give up or do we continue to educate ourselves to make sure that we do our part to not land in this predicament again. That is the most important thing. To continue to educate no matter what the outcome.
“I’m voting for Kerry so the war in Iraq will stop” –young potential voter
“What if somebody came into your room while you were gone and threw your books on the floor, dropped food everywhere and left it an absolute mess. And when you came home he looks at you dead in your face and said ‘So…What’s your plan to clean up this mess'”– Michael Moore in Las Vegas speaking about Kerry’s efforts to pull troops out of the war and fixing America.
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Unfortunately with this being the platform that the election is built upon many of the 1st time voters in our country are somewhat misled. If the movement put half as much effort in directing the youth to watch the debates as they did to get you to register to vote (especially BET who aired music videos while the “important” networks showed the debate), they would understand that simply putting Kerry in office will not…I repeat…WILL NOT end the war in Iraq. He said himself that he would do his “best” to remove our troops in 6 months to a year. 6 months to a year!?!?The American death toll continues to escalate with each month, as it becomes more and more like Vietnam than any other war. But how many innocent Iraqi men,women and children have died. Contrary to popular belief (especially to what is shown on television and movies) wars are not fought on some basin land where there is nothing but soldiers on one side and soldiers on the other with only space and opportunity separating them. Wars are fought in the streets, where kids go to school, where parents go shopping, where people spend their everyday lives. Picture a war on US soil. It wouldn’t happen in the desert, it would be right there on your corner. Bombs being dropped, bullets whizzing by your windows and blood on the streets. Hell, with that being said, I want our troops out now! But that cannot happen and we need to understand that 1st and foremost. So how many voters will feel hoodwinked and bamboozled once a year or two passes and we are still fighting the very war that they wasted their vote on stopping? Anybody who follows politics will know that Democrats as well as Republicans tend to “flip-flop” (a new political term) to gain votes. Don’t get me wrong, if a monkey were running against Bush I’d vote for the cute little chimp. At least he doesn’t know that he’s ruining the country. Bush does.
“The thing is, people like Russell Simmons, they running around trying to get people to vote and say that’s how you participate in making a difference. But they ain’t educating people on how the system works.” “And that to me is criminal” –stic.man, XXL Oct.’04
There are so many aspects that encompass this election that we need to know before we hit the election booths. For one there is a threat bigger than the town of Iraq and it’s couple of thousand soldiers. That bigger threat is North Korea, which harnesses weapons of mass destruction that we sold them. Yeah that’s right we know we sold them because we have the damn receipts. But we are busy telling another country to disarm while we continue to create more weapons of mass destruction. Kind of contradictory ain’t it? This is a country that refuses to be “Americanized” but for some reason we feel it does. Does anybody understand that our country is hated by many, many other countries because we are too busy trying to regulate the rest of the world but fail to take care of our own. There is the Genocide in Sudan. There are other countries suffering but where are we to liberate them huh? I guess Iraq, for some reason, is more important (cough…oil…cough). There is the fact that still remains that we have installed dictators into the so-called countries that we “liberated.” Isn’t that some sort of oxymoron? There are the countries whose workers cannot afford the $140 basketball jerseys they create (making 12 cents an hour constitutes a loooong savings plan just to be like Lebron). At home there is the issue of Healthcare and its increasing costs. We are the only western country that charges people to go to the doctor. Yeah, countries like Canada do not charge you when you get sick. Both Bush and Kerry do not believe in same-sex marriages but John Kerry believes that same-sex couples should have rights just like married couples do (doctor visits, taxes and the like). For the youth out there, Bush’s failure to fund the No Child Left Behind Act (the act that makes sure that all monies allotted to education are used up and not wasted. Millions of dollars not appointed to fund our kids educations are simply lost and go back to the US treasury) affects your schools and the tools our youth need to excel in school. We have a Patriot Act, which threatens the privacy of every American young or old. We have to understand that even if we do manage to get Kerry in office that he still has to answer to the pressures of the House and the Senate. We have 200 Bush appointed federal judges who are amongst the most conservative we have seen since the Reagan era. These judges threaten affirmative action and civil liberties like none other and their impact will be felt long after Bush is gone. I can go on and on about the things that affect you directly or indirectly but that could take weeks and we don’t have weeks. I don’t have the platform that P. Diddy and the rest of the more visible talents have to educate voters. We need to take responsibility in not only getting out the vote, but to also make the votes count.
“America has to commit suicide if the world is to be a better place. If you want to go beyond voting American interests must put a gun to its head and commit suicide because as long as we are only interested in American interests we go out and invade the rest of the world. The real question is are you a citizen of the United States or are you a citizen of the world? And so for me, I would say voting in a corrupt society adds more corruption.” – KRS-1 when asked about his “terrorist” statements
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What we have to understand is this, America is bleeding profusely. John Kerry is merely a band-aid, not the solution. But in order to heal the wound we must first stop the bleeding. But before we get out to vote we must first know that a band-aid will not completely mend a wound. If not treated correctly by education and knowledge the band-aid will eventually give way to infection and disease. I am not saying for people to not get out and vote, I’m merely saying understand the problem at hand and that Kerry is not the savior. But in order to begin the healing process for our country we must first stop the bleeding.
With all this being said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting people registered to vote. I applaud the efforts by P. Diddy and the many others using their popularity to help. But it doesn’t begin or stop there. At these crucial times we need to make an attempt to make sure that everyone is educated well before the election. We need to campaign year round for knowledge and education. Through the pieces that I have wrote for the past few months I have mentioned stereotypes, the power of the media, taking care of our culture (past and present) and being the change you want to see in the world. All of these fall into where we are now. We have to understand that even if this election doesn’t remove Bush from office, we can’t give up. The movement starts from the bottom, not by some person who has never understood what it’s like to be poor. Not from a person who has never understood the problems within urban America, from property based education to redlining to the income gap between worker and owner (damn near a 300% difference). These are a few of the problems that plague our world today. We need to recognize that we, the 40 million strong young minds of the world have to take the reigns and be the change we want to see in the world but as my quote stated at the beginning….
“Life without knowledge is death in disguise”
But I’m just a critic…Who the Hell am I?
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