Supplementary » November 18, 2004

How should we redirect our political creativity?

By Al Jourgensen

They told me that as an artist I should stay out of politics. Some of my peers taunted that it was “moronic” for me to express my opinions—that I shouldn’t mix art with politics. This fall, Ministry joined forces with Music for America and Punkvoter.com to register voters throughout our U.S. Evil Doer Tour. So did a lot of other artists, musicians and youth vote organizations to target voters ages 18-29. Guess what? It worked. Young voters showed up en masse: 4.6 million more 18 to 29 year olds voted this year than in 2000. The youth vote is now an invigorated force to be reckoned with.

But our work has just begun. America is still at war. American kids are still dying for oil, Bush’s friends are still getting richer off the backs of American young people. College tuition keeps rising (tuition rose again 10 percent last year alone and 30 percent since Bush first took office). And the fight for healthcare, prescription drugs and a real energy plan to get us out of wars in the Middle East are all still in front of us.

So we’ll continue to disseminate information and rally our troops here in the homeland. We’ll be in state-by-state battles fighting for justice, ensuring the Senate does not confirm judges who want to overturn Roe v. Wade. Most importantly, we’ll be preparing for the Senate and House races in 2006.

All of us did our part this year. If I can register several thousand voters at my concerts alone and Punkvoter.com and Music For America can register tens of thousands of voters, the message is clear: Americans want change and it is not going to stop.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  I don’t get it, the title of the article is: ‘How should we redirect our politcal creativity.’ And what we get in the body is some guy patting himself on the bac k for registering a few thousand voters. Party on Al

  Posted by clark Nitrate on Nov 18, 2004 at 10:30 PM

  Seems like there’s a lot of emphasis on what the Dems will be doing. And it also seems to me they let us down quite a bit, what was that about Kerry being a fighter and making sure every vote is counted? And couldn’t ITT find anyone that is maybe concerned about the integrity of the US voting system? Personally, I believe that is the fight of our lifetimes to make sure we have verifiable voting from here on out.

  Posted by Planet B on Nov 19, 2004 at 4:53 PM

  We should redirect our political creativity toward fixing our embarrasssingly broken election system. The first and most important item on the agenda must be to make all voting systems nationwide auditable and recountable. We must have a paper trail for every vote or there is really no point in having further elections. In addition the current practice having openly partisan officials, such as Katherine Harris and J Kenneth Blackwell, make, enforce and change the rules as it suits them must be stopped. Until we have open transparent election procedures overseen by objective non-partisan officials, all talk of policy positions and campaign strategies are a total waste of time and effort. If these problems are not addressed, Democrats may never win another national election.
  Please see http://www.votergate.tv and http://www.blackboxvoting.org

  Posted by DAS on Nov 19, 2004 at 5:13 PM

  I think since only the Libertarian and Green Parties are actively recounting votes in Ohio and Florida, I like the post where the Dems are dead.
  I will give my votes to either the Libertarians or Greens from now on , since the Dems and of course the Republikkans do not speak for me or about america’s real core values.
  peace

  Posted by skunkweed on Nov 22, 2004 at 6:21 PM

  this is the ULTIMATE example of a useless article from someone that just HAS to put his two cents in

  Posted by yec on Dec 11, 2004 at 8:37 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 6 posts.

Also featured Fallujah 101
The Ballots at the Back of the Bus
Election Reflection

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!