And now, for something completely different: an actual student for Kucinich.

(...imagine that, eh?)

I'm back at school, now. [and of course, right after I type that, I get a resounding "yes, yes you are" in the form of Dave Matthews' Band being played across the hall from me.] I suppose this makes me a '.50 intern' now, because I'm still a young person doing a lot of work for the campaign, and I'm still the SfK coordinator for the Great Lakes region. I just don't sit in the office all day every day with the rest of the Cleveland interns. I'm also going to continue to blog, which'll be an interesting part of it. Consider me your correspondent, I suppose.

Though I have approximately as much free time as I did while back up in Cleveland (read: minimal), I would like to report that I have in fact seen the sun for the first time since I've been here. I saw it today at about 11:15am. T'was pretty awesome and in no way overrated. So, before I return to my regularly scheduled Thursday Pwnage, this is for my homefries up north:

"SUN"
(artist's rendition)
Nowadays I frequently run around looking for places to go and people to talk into joining us (usually the former which results in the latter), which I like to refer to as activisting. At my school's involvement fair, I politely walked right past the army recruitment tables to go hit up every table under the "special interests" sign... mostly with classic "Hey! I LOVE [your cause]!! Talk to me!" kinda enthusiasm.
The mention that I'm with the Kucinich crew got me mostly lukewarm reactions, but I did get a couple of sincerely excited people who were very happy to sign up with me and a lot of contact info from big important orgs like Amnesty and the campus' ACLU chapter. More promising: I've got a whole lineup of human rights, pro-civil liberties, anti-war, super-actiony/issue-specific campus group meetings to go to so that I can talk to people and basically say "If you care about [issue], this is who you should be voting for, ps help me out." Starting what's only the third student campaign on this here densely populated campus will be quite the adventure.

--That's right, by the way, the third. The Ron Paulers are everywhere, including here, and I have spoken to and made peace with them. They don't get in our way at all, and the ones I spoke with were actually decent to me, so good for them. I talked to the Obama kids under the guise that I too was a supporter (..hah), and among other things, they expressed how they were all quite pleased that Clinton's people do not have a presence here. My goal here is to build a Kucinich Coalition that'll make the Obama kids wish they only had Clinton people to deal with instead. I also aim to convert win over at least one of the Obama kids to our side in time.

An afterthought: I have yet to see or hear of any Edwards supporters here at all, however there is a guy on my floor who kinda really looks like him. I plan to make him aware of this in eventuality.

There's been a few discouraging moments thus far, but I'm doing my best to turn a blind eye to them on my worst days... and on my best days, I sass right back (uh, in the nicest way possible), 'cuz I'm about done with people who want to tell me that I'm the fool 'cuz I don't support their precious corporate democrats.

And with that sentiment thoroughly expressed, I'm going to go for a little walk. I've kinda missed the outside world and its crudely rendered green smile, after all.

-s.

Ah, Students for Kucinich.

A couple of us were awake at an obscene hour a couple nights ago, and decided that everyone really needed to get started on our big Students for Kucinich projects. The very next morning, we congregated here in the Intern Pit to start assigning specific tasks:

Harrison! Teach people how to start up SFK groups! Also teach people how to register to vote!

Asher! Write up a proposal for the $10 for Truth project! Tell people about the primary elections!

Josef! Write a proposal for another campaign idea! Contact lots of people and be friendly!

Stacey! Make pictures!

Ben! Keep watching tapes!

Hal! Hole yerself up in a dark room upstairs and make us sixteen websites! NO LESS THAN SIXTEEN. GO.

Great idea, right? It's important work, it needs to be done. However, as Asher mentioned, The Intern Family Hydra has just lost three heads. I illustrate:

"OH NO"

This means two things: an obvious change in atmosphere, and fewer thingdoers doing things. Thus, we've all been running around inside the office here for longer hours than usual. Harrison and Asher just sit at their computers and type all day long. Josef is contacting important people and being astoundingly friendly (in between sitting at his computer and typing as much as Harrison and Asher). I've been spending much time hovering over and around a copy machine. Hal... Poor Hal. His comings and goings are mostly unbeknownst to us-- all we really know is that he does very late nights.

In addition to this new SfK work, we have to do everything else that we had been working on before. We also have to answer phones.

We might see the sun approximately ten minutes a day, if we're lucky. Make no mistakes, we're getting a lot done at a decent pace. In the teeny little meanwhiles, though, we're becoming a wee bit unstable. In other words, it's been pretty crazy to the point where we've pretty much caught crazy. Harrison started talking in a voice that was something between "manly announcer" and "old-school Batman"-- which made us laugh 'til we cried. Asher won't (can't) stop beatboxing. Ben walks into the room every once in a long while, singing a line from some eighties tune in falsetto, and then walks out. Josef dances, and I cannot explain this any further. Me... I'm quiet. But rest assured, I'm going sufficiently crazy on the inside.

Josef says, "We're gonna lose it again today, you guys, I can feel it."

"A challenge, Josef? There is nothing I enjoy more," replies Harrison in his Batman voice.

I'm sure feelin' challenged. And I'm losing it. I can't piece together coherent thoughts too terribly well. So for this week's installment of Estasia's Thursday Pwnage, let's talk crazy.

When people have no solid arguments against something, sometimes they'll resort to petty insults. Lots of people have no legit reason to dislike Dennis Kucinich (or don't know enough about him to legitimately dislike him), so they pick on the way he looks. Judging by the things they say, Dennis isn't qualified to be president because he's too short. Or because he has ears that stick out some. Or because he gesticulates when he talks. Some people could simply never even consider a candidate who doesn't look and act exactly as they think a president should. Whatever, kids.

Well then, from there we consider the thought of supporting some candidate who voted for the war in Iraq and funded its continuation. The thought of voting for somebody who wants to give more money to insurance companies who deny patients coverage to make more money. The thought of voting for a rich corporate democrat of whom you've heard only because that candidate has been bought by those in charge of news coverage (see my last blog entry). How about voting for somebody who doesn't believe in what they're saying, somebody in whom you yourself can't entirely believe?

(..And it could go without saying that now, the thought of voting Republican at all is thoroughly crazy. But it won't.)

I'll tell you what all that is-- it's CRAZY. Voting (especially this time around) is a very important time NOT TO BE CRAZY.

I encourage everyone out there to encourage everyone else out there-- please, look into your favorite candidate's history and credentials, weigh the positives and negatives, and try your hardest to find out if there is another one who can do better. Vote for the one you can believe in, regardless of their reported popularity.
(yeah, it's probably Dennis. But seriously, don't take it straight from my mouth, people oughta figure it out for themselves.)

In final summation, I found some funny pictures of a few of the other candidates and wanted to incorporate them in this entry somehow. Do with them what you will.

















Join me in laughter.


Meanwhile, Josef has developed a German accent.
-s

My name is Stacey. There is a fan blowing in my face. I am listening to Led Zeppelin. I just consumed a clementine. This is the Thursday of my fourth week as an intern for a certain presidential candidate.

I work hard every day, just like the other interns. We all have our respective big fat important projects, but we also do a lot of other things around the office. We come in to the office at nine in the morning, and often don't leave until nine at night.. or later. The days fly by. The work we do is rewarding, though. Promise.

We've got discouraging messages coming from all around-- particularly the big fat media bias we've got working against us here. We read political magazines and websites, flipping and clicking around only to find little to no mention of our Dennis, even when he does newsworthy things all the dang time. We crowd around the television here in the office hoping to see some mad-hot debate action, only to see that he is given very little time to speak. Case in point: I was personally bored out of my mind during the recent Iowa debate. Why do some candidates get to speak so much more than others? Why only call on specific candidates to answer relevant questions? Why call on all of the candidates to answer irrelevant questions?"

That debate was nearly pointless. I don't know about you (collective 'you') or anyone else, but I want to know about each candidate's stance on important issues-- not on each other, not on whether prayer can prevent hurricanes. That aside, the news coverage afterward was appalling. Pictures of the candidates up on the ABC News website included everyone except Dennis. ABC News' articles summing up the debates barely mentioned that Dennis was even there. Dennis won the official "who did the best at the debate?" poll by an impressive margin, and ABC News has made zero mention of this as of now.

Much of the media seems to hate Dennis. It's funny, They just might want people to think he's a jester. That he's just too extreme to be taken seriously. They definitely want people to think that he "has no chance to win". That's been working for them thus far, considering how often we're heard it ourselves-- people even call up the office to tell us that Dennis should just drop out of the race.

I kinda don't blame those big corporations (and Other Bad Guys) for being terrified of what Dennis could do as president. He's their worst nightmare. He's the worst nightmare of a lot of people who have terrible intentions, so it would be convenient if they could make him look bad in whatever way they can. Since he's not a guy you can really dig up a lot of dirt about, though (unlike the other candidates), they just do whatever they can to shut him up. The American people are falling straight into the media's trap, it would seem.

Relevant Embedded Video:



It's so clearly messed up, all of this. It's so obvious. It's really terrible, because this is so important and yet so many people don't see it, which really makes me wanna get out there and do something. So, that's why I'm here. Every time I get to hear him speak on television, I think, "that's why I'm here." Every time I read about our government doing something ridiculously corrupt, I think, "that's why I'm here." When they ignore us, when they criticise us, when they laugh in our faces, it only fuels the fire. We're all directing our frustrated energy towards starting a revolution up in this little Cleveland office, and ...well, since it's Kucinich, maybe it won't be televised. That won't be our problem, however.