The Election Is A Comin'

I'm not recruiting for votes. I haven't even conclusively decided who I'm voting for. So I thought I'd share some of the tools and sites I've been looking at to help me to decide who will get a cross on my ballot paper, and who will definitely not!

There are quizzes like Who Should You Vote For? online, where you tell them your attitudes to policies, and they tell you at the end which parties your views seem to coincide with the most.

Abortion Rights are doing an election campaign. You can download a factsheet, and lobby your candidates via the site. You just type in your postcode and it lets you email all your local candidates. It then requests that you let them know your candidates' responses to their questions on abortion rights, so that others who enter their postcode can see where everyone stands.

I have only had a response from one candidate (Green, and she answered the way I hoped she would), but hopefully the others will be forthcoming too.

Similarly, the UK Disabled People's Council have put together a list of questions which you may want to question your prospective MPs about.

MyGayVote.co.uk has pie charts showing how the different parties have fared in terms of their past votes on LGBT issues.

Planet Mouret Films is "a blog designed for learning disabled adults and those who are involved in the LD community", with lots of straight forward information about the general election, links to easy-read information about voting, easy-read manifestos and the rights of learning disabled adults to vote.

And Scope are urging "local authorities to act immediately to make sure polling stations are more accessible. They have warned that some people may find it difficult to vote in next month’s elections but said it was not too late for councils to make a difference."

(Cross-posted at The F Word)

The Man Done Good

So, a black man is to be the most powerful man in the world. The first black President of the USA. Even as the polls and such were improving over the last few weeks, I didn't quite believe it could happen, especially since the weirdness of Bush becoming President (two elections ago) when he didn't actually win the most votes.

Obama is far from perfect, but shit, compared to McCain and Palin, it was vital he won. I haven't heard anything about the Palin of the Obama campaign, Biden, but it seems he is vice-President elect so no sudden wiping out of him by the voters. (I remember when the 1997 general election results were being counted here in the UK, I was desperate for the Tories to lose power to Labour, but for Tony Blair to have lost his seat so not be PM).

Of course when I say Biden is the Palin of the Obama campaign, I mean technically (i.e. running mate, potential vice president), rather than ideologically!

While US politics affect us here, affect most of the world in fact, we do get disproportionate coverage of such things, compared to what we hear about the rest of the world.

When the election campaigns were starting, months ago, at the top of each news report, there were groans all round. And the process was going to be so looooong, these November elections so far away. I, and many, were bored of the American elections by about May.

But these last few days, the possibilities... peaked my interest again. And the whole thing paid off.

Congrats to Obama and supporters. Let's hope he does a better job than his shambling predecessor.


NaBloPoMo

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Drill, Drill, Drill*

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was
a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of
drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a
particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness
or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I
have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact
that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the
polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence
against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the
Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The
people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of
Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is
antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story --
connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women,
giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance,
and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous
choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those
candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in
so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally
disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the
world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen
the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency
with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a
metaphor. In her world and the world of fundamentalists nothing
changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global
warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying
our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's
plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered
species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and
plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here
to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It
was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women
who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should
have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or
not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth
control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we
know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather
she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to
dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an
environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could
and might very well be the next president of the United States . She
would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting
rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot
hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private
right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector,
when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are
denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and
state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this
election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the
future not just of the U.S. , but of the planet. It will determine
whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever
uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards
dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence
through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether
we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in
alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It
will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or
whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine
whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of
fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your
power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the
hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of
teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of
destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises
that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis,
doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the
floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between
nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing
we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008