MY CRASH COURSE IN CIVIC ENGAGEMENT |
January 10, 2005
by Vivek Mohta
On a sunny September morning, I strolled through Harvard Yard on the way to my office in the Science Center. The cool wind and throng of freshmen signaled the beginning of fall semester. As I walked through the activities fair, I stopped to talk to an old roommate from the Ross Young Scholars Program, a summer program in number theory for high school students. We hadn’t seen each other in over a year and we had a lot of catching up to do. As we were parting, he casually added, “Have you heard? Something has happened at the World Trade Center.” Shaking my head no, I continued on to my office to puzzle out a renormalization group calculation for one of my research projects.
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MANY THANKS |
January 09, 2005
Dear Reader:
After a year of running what we believe have been compelling issues, Morgan and I have decided to cease regular publication of CYSI Online, because we don’t have the capacity to make the initiative what we’d like it to be. We are proud of the issues we have produced and the discourse they have generated, and hope the initiative has benefited you with ideas, perspectives and inspiration provided by the many of you who have written articles or commented.
We would like to keep the email list and the site readily useable. That way we can all use it as a forum for discussing pressing issues, from time to time, using the same format, but not regular publication. We are happy to take you off the list though, if you’d like, if that does not appeal to you.
Available here is one more article by Vivek Mohta, a graduate student at Harvard, writing about the lessons he has learned it becoming more civically engaged. Please take a few minutes to read it and enjoy, and comment this month on any articles over the past year that you found particularly useful.
We would like to thank the founding members that were such a big part of making this initiative work. Their names and organizations are on the left-hand column of the website. And thanks once again for your participation. You all and your important work inspire us and will continue to be a driving force in our lives in the future.
Your friends,
Luke and Morgan
GETTING SCHOOLED |
December 13, 2004
Getting Schooled… and the Learning that Goes Along With It.
By Meg Ansara
For November 2nd, 2004, I was sent back to school, the University of Maine in Orono to be exact.
In early August, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hired me to serve as a consultant to their national field program, training staff and volunteers in a subset of the now infamous twenty-one swing states. Campaign finance reform, as well as the extreme and early polarization of the electorate, meant that the DNC needed to run a different kind of program to reach those prized undecideds and woo them to the Kerry-Edwards ticket. To help make this happen, they put together a team of “trainers,” including myself, who would be dispatched to train and support hardworking and overwhelmed field organizers. As the campaign barreled towards Election Day, I logged a lot of hours in rental cars, budget motels, and getting lost on the back roads of West Virginia where cell phone reception simply does not exist. But for the homestretch, the DNC sent me to the University of Maine in Orono campus with the charge of turning out 1,500 students in order to win the electoral vote of Maine’s second congressional district.
POST ELECTION MOURNING: THE REVENGE |
By Jorge Miranda
Like many young people across the country, I was shocked on election night as the returns came in and it seemed more and more likely that the progressives had suffered yet another huge loss. Half of me wondered went wrong while the other half worried about the future: how can we keep things from going wrong again? And underlying both of these questions was a strong doubt: even if I had some answers, what could I possibly do to make a difference?
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LUKE WRITES THE PRESIDENT |
November 12, 2004
President Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
I am writing because I have recently read since the election that you believe you have won political capital and intend to use it. I want to make clear that you do not have a mandate from me. I believe your policies are taking us in the wrong direction, and approximately 56 million Americans agree with me. I know you may have won the popular vote, but please do not wreck my country in my name. I think most of what you are doing is wrong, dangerous, and immoral. A few areas of special concern are:
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OCTOBER EDITION |
November 11, 2004
CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE 23-YEAR-OLD AT A TIME
By Manda Aufochs Gillespie
FISCAL REFORM IS CRITICAL FOR A HEALTHY ILLINOIS
By Jennifer Holuj
SELLING SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
By Michael Levinson
UPSKI SPEAKS TO PISSED OFF VOTERS
By Manda Aufochs Gillespie
CHANGING THE WORLD ONE 23-YEAR-OLD AT A TIME |
October 08, 2004
An Interview with Eli Pariser from MoveOn
Manda Aufochs Gillespie,
F News Magazine (Interview also published in the the F News)
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Young people are less involved in politics and less likely to vote than ever. But, lest you think that the generation of 18-to-30-year olds, our generation, has sent themselves to their proverbial bedroom letting the adults pick up after or destroy the world on their own, think again. Many of the political world’s super-stars are of that forgotten younger generation—the one that no one is quite sure if they are x or y or maybe z.
Eli Pariser, the 23-year old Executive Director of MoveOn PAC, is probably one of the best-known names in the fight to get the average American back into the political process. Pariser hit the mainstream when after 9/11 he launched a website to encourage a peaceful response to the attacks by having citizens get involved in the democratic process. Within days the website received almost 2 million hits and claimed one seventh of Alta Vista’s browsing traffic, and Pariser began fielding calls from media all over the world, including Bulgaria, China, the Netherlands and the UK.
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FISCAL REFORM IS CRITICAL FOR A HEALTHY ILLINOIS |
By Jennifer Holuj, Program Director
Center for Tax and Budget Accountability
Illinois is in financial crisis. For the past four years the state has faced record, multi-billion dollar budget deficits and it is predicted that this trend will continue into the unforeseen future. To truly understand the magnitude of this crisis, it is important to realize that this gaping budget hole exists within the state’s General Funds, which pay for the programs and services most often used by the general public, such as education, health care, economic development and affordable housing. Therefore, if no action is taken to resolve this financial crisis, Illinois will be forced to continue cutting and under-funding the programs and services millions of Illinois families need and rely on every day.
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SELLING SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT |
By Michael Levinson, Executive Director
BUILD St. Louis
Imagine a city where friends greet you as you run your errands… where every time you enter a store, a new cultural delight awaits you... where the dollars you spend buy you more than groceries or a book – they also provide plentiful tax revenue for quality schools, lush parks, and public safety.
And imagine that this city has a group of individuals working alongside public officials to keep it on the right track. These leaders are trustworthy, not because they are experts, but because they are your neighbors who share the community’s concerns and interests.
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UPSKI SPEAKS TO PISSED OFF VOTERS |
October 07, 2004
An Interview with William Upski Wimsatt
Manda Aufochs Gillespie,
F News Magazine (Interview also published in the the F News)
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How did a young man who came to notoriety in Chicago as a graffiti writer go on to be a prized journalist, youth organizer, philanthropist and, now, electoral politics warrior?
This question has me on the phone at midnight with William Upski Wimsatt. I am surprised to find him as good a listener as he is an articulate speaker. He explains, “I never thought I would get involved in electoral politics, but The League of Pissed Off Voters is the culmination of everything I’ve tried to do so far.”
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