I write to speak for Gen-X and Gen-Y progressive thinkers.
In other words, those of us who are too young to have acquired enough influence to be heard yet, (but who still have mouths and are not afraid to use them!):
"First a word about who we are:
People say we are called Gen-X because we stand for nothing.
They are wrong. We are proud to X out the things that don't work:
We stand for X-ing out prejudice in all its guises,... racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, etc....all these things have no place in the future we will create.
We stand for X-ing out reliance on only old energy sources that are running out.
We stand for X-ing out our country's temporary attitude that patriotism is blindly following. We believe that to be a patriot is to take onto our own shoulders the responsibility to question and think before acting.
We stand for X-ing out our country's trend of thinking only of immediate gain....THINK! Bottled water is now normal because our household water tastes so bad....that can't be a good thing and we don't want to see Oxygen Bars become the norm just so we can have a car that seats 10....SUV's are just not that important to us...we'd rather have a reason to go for a drive with the window down!
People say we are called Gen-Y because we have nothing to offer.
They are wrong. We are proud to ask Y so many things in our world have not been improved even when the facts about our species' bad habits have been present long before we were born.
We stand for asking Y more money is spent on weaponry than feeding the hungry.
We stand for asking Y the millions on warfare appeared out of nowhere after our social security was drained to offer our nation a tax cut for the wealthy.
We stand for asking Y more money hasn't been spent on saving the water we drink and the air we breath from pollution, when our government is vying to ease restrictions off of the pollution caused by older generation's businesses..have they no children? No grandchildren?
We stand for asking our elders Y they spend so much money on debating marriage to gay couples when divorce is rampant, true love is a blessing, and there aren't enough parents out there for all the members of our generation who are up for adoption. Gay couples are now some of the most educated, and with all the fighting they have to do to get through a day, they must truly want to be together, for who would willingly choose a life so strongly criticized by others?
We stand for asking Y anyone would believe that no parents, a life of orphanages and foster homes with no stability, could ever be seen as a better way of life for a child than having two mothers or two fathers would?
That said, here is a bird's eye view for any civic leader who cares about a younger vote...and we will be voting!!!!!
Our leaders say it is us against a people most of us have never met, and who have not met us.
We are told to trust our lives in the hands of men and women who are making it easier to pollute and who have taken our social security.....and therefore we see them as caring not for the welfare of future generations but only about controlling the wealth and power in behalf of a select few concerned only with the immediate gain for themselves.
It's like watching someone eat cheeseburgers everyday and then wonder why their cholesterol is high. But a nation is a civilization because it aims to continue itself.
So now these same leaders who have stripped our generation of the security of inheriting a world with clean air, clean water and social security tells us to fear those who worship Allah.
We ask them, do not the mothers of their soldiers mourn their slain and bleeding children on the battleground?
Do not their children watch the doorways of their homes trying hard to comprehend that their parents are not coming back?
Do not their spouses miss the warmth of the body they have grown to know so well by their side at night?
And in this horror of competing for power, have not the leaders on both sides forgotten their first and only responsibility to their people --- the welfare of children, wives, husbands, and the lands in which they live?
Does it matter who governs the oil in the long run....there is only a limited supply...so why don't our leaders take off their sunglasses and take a good look at the sun?
One wonders, where did the millions of dollars come from to arm our armies when on the 10th of September, in both our country and our enemy's lands, children were starving, hospitals did not have enough medicines, and education was poor. Where was the money then?
You may say it isn't that simple, that money is allocated to certain things and can only be used for the purposes they've been tagged for.
As the generation that was robbed of our social security so that the wealthy might have a tax cut, we can say first hand that its people who make the rules, and its people that tag whether money is for food, medicine, education, or for the acquiring of more money.
We have not forgotten that money is only paper and metal, given value because we as a people assign it value and most importantly, we as a nation have forgotten that money is valued not for itself, but for what it can provide.
The United States is now tearing itself apart, and our enemies' are already fractured.
We are people being played as pawns in a war governed by a very few.
Ask a starving child, "How can we afford the money to kill when we cannot afford to feed?" They will not understand.
Our leaders would say this is a simple view.
We say it is a human view, and you will not find a greater truth.
An urgent plea to our elders:
Those of you who are tempted to hate all Muslims, and who send out hate messages for us to do the same, ask yourselves, did the Muslim child praying by his bed before going to sleep hate our soldier so much that he chopped his head off? Of course not.
Or did his mother, who mourns for the children of other mothers she knows send that plane into our buildings?
They did not request this war either.
The old man who feeds the hungry and teaches the Koran to the children in his neighborhood has more in common with your own Sunday school teacher than with a soldier in his own country. We do not need to be Muslim to see this clearly.
Do you feel anything but shame towards our soldiers who brutalized their sons? Of course not.
Do you feel anything in common with them? Not unless abuse is something you already enjoy.
It's time that the people on both sides of this war remind our leaders that vengeance is a never ending cycle, one that we are sick of, costs to much in human lives and in money, and that we want those bodies and millions of dollars to go towards rebuilding the fabric of our societies.
That is the fastest way towards peace...putting it towards going forward...towards evolving as a human race, not devolving into thinking in the best interests of a very few.
This is about recognizing that there is only one sphere circulating the sun with our biological necessities provided for, and we need to start sharing it using the grey matter we've been blessed with.
We, the younger generation, care about the mess we will inherit.
We had looked forward to standing on the shoulders of giants before us, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, and instead we have grown up witnessing the crucifixion of Mathew Sheppard, the genocide of Rwanda, the spending thousands to cover a statue's breast for John Ashcroft while arts are removed from our schools due to budget cuts, the repealing of environmental regulations for entire industries, the taking away of our social security so that the wealthy can benefit, and now the push to amend our constitution to prevent a select group of people from marrying when our country was founded by those fleeing persecution....and our generation waits in orphanages, when gay couples are quite often among the few who will take the courses needed to raise a crack baby or welcome an interracial adoption.
Is it any wonder, that when our elders have taught us about the great men and women of humanity's past, and to "love they neighbor" that we now wonder where these serious errors of judgment are coming from?
We were taught to aim to emulate the best of those that have gone before us, yet everyday on the news we hear the media telling us to be suspicious of those who are different, our government acting before gathering facts, and spending more money than we were told we had as a nation to takle problems such as education, discovering new energy sources, and health.
We want to be proud of what our nation stands for again.
We want to elect leaders based on who is best for the job, not who is the least bad.
We are no longer willing to follow blindly and accept that patriotism and loyalty to our country is about following without question. We refuse to respect any leader that says we better watch what we say....that is not what our generation is out there dying for.
No, we believe that to be the most responsible inheritors of our world, we have a responsibility to question so that we can have confidence in our shared welfare as a nation.
So, we ask to remind you, our elders in power, in behalf of the young, that you are not merely making decisions for yourselves, but rather building the foundation on which our generation will add our lives.
Please do not think of only today, but remember our future begins with your dreams, the seeds you choose to plant.
But the time for planting for your generation's rewards was during your forbearers' time, and our planting will be in behalf of those who come after us to reap. This is the nature of the world, it has always been and will always be...we can either choose to admit it, and work in the best interest of humanity as a whole, or we can treat it like a drive thru window and give our society a heart attack down the line as the result of focusing only on immediate gain.
This is now a plea to you, anyone 40 and older,....this nation is under your influence, under your power....you are the ones who will plant the seeds today....
Please, we beg you, plant them with a conscience and with a vision greater than that of today.
We thank you for reading this."
