Picketing the Debate

Friday morning, a group of YOUNG people from Fayatteville and other parts of Arkansas converged on the Convention Center to protest the exclusivity of the 'scheduled' debate. It turned out to be a 'canned' interview of the Republican candidate John Boozman and the incumbent Democratic senator Blanche Lincoln. The sponsors were the Association of Arkansas Counties. It was their 42nd annual conference. According to the Sentinel Record, "it was not a debate". Since the questions were pre-selected and had to be 'county-related' so the information given by the candidates must have been extremely informative. The reader can consult the Sentinel Record for all the details concerning the 'non-debate'.
There were about 50 people that felt strongly enough, including the Green candidate John Gray and Independent Trevor Down that picketed for the right of redress according to the First Amendment. Arriving at 8am to let the press and the attendees see how much it means to all of Arkansas to have an open debate, we were too late to see anyone arrive. Having been told the 'debate' would start at 8:30am it seems we were hornswoggled by the media. Everyone behaved civilly even though we were disillusioned by the lack of concern by the media for all persons running for the office of U.S. Senate. The fact that John Gray represents the values that used to be the foundation of the Democratic Party, he was excluded from the discussion.
When the right to know is controlled by the media or a group of elected officials enjoying a conference at Arkansas taxpayers expense, it seems the voters are the losers.
Channel 4 (NBC) and Fox news in Little Rock interviewed the candidates for their opinion on the picketing. Only one was included in the evening news sound bites. The voters of Arkansas need to get off their couches and ask the media to give them the information or allow the people with the information to give them access through the public airwaves. Censorship by omission is still censorship.
The bright spot on the whole affair was the turnout of young voters. Our country may be saved yet. They will not buy into the negative ads concerning "gay marriage" or "abortion" or "racism". They were all born after the law was passed requiring seatbelts in every vehicle, Title VII giving girls the same access to funds as the boys' football teams, Voter rights and desegregation. Their best friends may be gay, black, Latino or old or infirm. They aren't concerned by those issues as having any real bearing on what impacts them directly. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan that worries them. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that worries them. Health care concerns them because they have family members that are denied health care just because the company they work for does not supply it. They understand that we cannot continue to fund a military establishment as a means of employing young people in America. It is counter-intuitive and counterproductive.
Pretending that we are fighting a war against terrorists that only feeds into the paranoia such as that surrounding the building of a mosque in New York City, is counterproductive. We have an infrastructure that is falling apart before our eyes and yet Washington blindly signs away our youth and our society with its needs, social and physical, to feed a Pentagon gone nuts with money. They are like a kid in a candy store, their eyes are bigger than their stomach as they hemorrhage our youth out on the fields of battle in places that are only necessary to 'test' new war toys. The machines that are too dated or impractical, they sell to other war torn countries to up the ante and feed our paranoia. Do we see any of the profits from the sale of these war toys returned to us as the primary investor as would be the case with Wall Street? No, a resounding NO. Congress just writes them a bigger check.
We need to hear from all candidates that feel Washington is out of control. We need to hear that there are alternatives to the same ol' same ol'.
We do not have to keep sending the" best of the worst" back to Washington year after year. We need to let the voters know there are alternatives out there.