Peace, Freedom, and Strawberries

[queerbychoice]

After ten years of contemplating it, I've finally gotten around to changing my political party registration. I am officially no longer a Democrat! I am now officially a Peace & Freedom Party member. I think the main thing this means for the near future is that if I find myself feeling obligated to vote for John Kerry in November, I can now do so without renouncing all claim to political non-mainstreamness.

I have also now purchased a pot and filled it with strawberries and dirt. No one will be more shocked than me if the strawberries actually grow, but we shall see.

Sean has written a rather important entry asking Why don't Americans care about American prison guards raping and abusing American prisoners too? Go read it.

Comments

[jaq.livejournal.com]

It confuses me that Americans register as supporting a party. I don't see why electoral registration and political affiliation should be connected.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

There are two reasons I know of. One is that in the primaries in most states, only members of a particular party are allowed to vote on who will become that party's candidate in the general election. the other is that it's part of the scheme to keep us with (for all intents and purposes) only a two-party system, because if a party doesn't get a certain minimum number of voters registered as belonging to it, the party can be kicked off the ballot. (This happened to the Peace & Freedom Party in California in 1998, but the Peace & Freedom Party launched a voter registration drive and successfully got itself back onto the ballot.) Originally I was talked into registering as a Democrat in order to be eligible to vote in the Democratic primaries, but now I've decided that Democratic primaries are hopelessly frustrating experiences for me anyway since I so often don't really like any of the candidates, so it's more important to me to help the Peace & Freedom Party stay on the ballot than it is to be allowed to vote in the democratic primaries. I'll just vote in the Peace & Freedom Party primaries instead.

[jaq.livejournal.com]

Primaries seem like a strange idea too - here it's up to the individual parties how they want to select their candidates, whereas primaries make it seem more institutionalised.

Here anyone can stand for election: in order to stop time-wasters they have to put up a deposit (£500 for the General Election), and they don't get it back if they poll less than 5%.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Hey, if I may suddenly change the subject completely - I just noticed your website is named after King Ethelred. Is there any particular reason you named it after him? Because he's one of my direct ancestors.

[jaq.livejournal.com]

Oh really? Well of course I'm a descendant of Thor myself. But I have an interest in the Dark Ages and the birth of England, and name all my computers starting with 'E', and Ethelred is one of the more infamous known names from that era.

[iadork4life.livejournal.com]

what about the pansexual party? eh?

that's an interesting party.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

It's not on the ballot. ;-) And I don't trust that anybody even bothers counting write-in candidates when there's a clear other winner. And I like my votes to be counted, although I did once cast a write-in vote for the Socialist candidate during the time that the Peace & Freedom Party had been removed from the ballot.

[brienf.livejournal.com]

I was once a democrat, but now I'm registered as PND - "party not designated." It's more independent than independent, since the indies have their own party in my state.

I still get shitloads of mailings from the DNC and the party's politicians, however.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I like to imagine that the Democrats will actually look at how many people registered with each affiliation, and therefore if they see I'm with Peace & Freedom they'll know not just that I was dissatisfied with the Democrats, but which political direction I'm dissatisfied in, and thereby what they ought to start doing to get people like me back. Though it doesn't really much seem like they care.

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to wonder if I should finally give up and register with a (liberal) party, if only to avoid getting Republican propaganda. I was going to switch for the primary, just so I could vote for Carol Moseley Braun.

I don't approve of political parties, but I wish I could somehow specify that the Republicans are to leave me alone (all rational conservatives are welcome to send mail to my address). Today there was a letter telling me how important it was to give more money to GWB because it would be so, so horrible if the DNC (which is full of radical liberals who've stolen the party from those good old-fashioned Southern Democrats) actually raised the record amount of money they've sworn to. Cause it's not like they're raising it to match the record sum their opposition has. ARGH.

And good luck with the strawberries, Gayle! I am an infamous plant-killer, too, and I just bought some little herb plants…

[socialismnow.livejournal.com]

"Why don't Americans care about American prison guards raping and abusing American prisoners too?"

Presumably because they've not been shown the photographs?

Amnesty International reported that torture was going on a year ago, and the Red Cross said the same thing privately to the administration, but the media didn't take it seriously until they saw photographic evidence.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Good point, and it leads to a practical plan for making people care. Now all I need to do is steal the film from the surveillance cameras at the local prisons.