PEACE RALLY October 27, 2007

Why the students believe this is so necessary:

l.) This is about peace more than anything. Yes the politics is important...it is vital to participate if anyone is a member of this society...but i think above all.. the idea of peace needs to be more widespread.
2.) This valley has grown to be very closed minded. There are TONS of information out there about what is REALLY going on in this war, yet people choose to ignore it. I think many of the adults are very set in their ways...not saying that their minds can’t be changed...but i think it is easier and possibly more effective to reach the young people. It is scary to me that even my little sister will get to vote in the next presidential election. I have spoken to some of her friends and many of them don’t even know a single presidential candidate.
3.) I was at a party a week or so ago...and I was of course giving my two cents about politics and what not of today...and I actually heard a fairly intelligent young man tell me that he "was going to vote for Rudy Giuliani, since he's gonna win anyway". Yes those words actually came out of someone's mouth. It terrified me. It's all just fun and games right... it doesn’t even effect us right? WRONG. These are all poor excuses that people today use.
4.)When our boyfriends, and brothers, and sons, start getting drafted...then people will care. But we shouldn’t have to wait until that point...especially when there are so many lives dependent on it. Not just American lives...but the lives of innocent Iraqi's. We are spending our time over there...when it is not our place. What is our excuse? That there are terrorists....well, we all know that is bull. That they need our help? Well then why aren't we helping countries like Darfur...and Niger.... THEY need our help. Why don't we spend billions of dollars to help our OWN citizens that need it. This makes no sense to me. Our debt is growing and these people in power are creating an unsafe and unstable future for our generation and the generations to come...all while claiming that they are doing the complete opposite. I’m scared...and not of terrorism at all.. but of our own government. I want our rights and freedoms that this country was founded on to remain in place. America was a brilliant idea...but it has become so neo-conservative and politics have become so corrupt, and for some reason people choose to look the other way. Here is a statement I wrote about what I feel about peace.

People have spoken so highly about this revolution for peace. I won't speak of revolution, I will speak of evolution. I believe that the evolution of man is to become peaceful. It is to achieve the ability to coexist without threatening our own existence. War is preventing us from evolving, it is keeping us from reaching our full potential, and it is destroying brilliant minds and souls. We have come a long way since the creation of man. We no longer need to be savages against each other to survive. We have come a long way since those times, and we still have a long way to go. Regardless of the long path ahead of us, peace is achievable. Peace is natural. Peace is not created, but destroyed when war is created. My mission is to find peace. The first step is to destroy war, but these wars will continue to thrive as long as we fight fire with fire. We need not fight fire with fire just as we need not fight ignorance with ignorance. We need to fight this ignorance with knowledge. We need to fight war with peace. Knowledge is our weapon, peace is our war, and evolution will overcome.

There really is so much to say. I try to stay as politically active as I possibly can...but it really is hard with the little time I have. I have lived in this country my whole life...and I haven’t lived a sheltered stable life.

(Kendal DeBellis speaking)
My mom was a single mother with four girls...we saw how the system works. We were bankrupt...We were on welfare...We had no home... I know how America works...and I've definitely seen the corruption. I've watched my own mother get screwed over in so many ways by the system...I've seen the lack of support. I left home at 17. I work at least 50 hours a week just so I can go to college because I DO want to get an education and I DO want to make a difference in this world. I just wish that people would wake up to what is really going on all over the world and not just in their own home. I wish they could see how much money is spent on pointless things...when there are kids starving and families struggling.

And of all the things that money is wasted on...war is the biggest.


Agreed upon by: James Lyndsay, Katie Lindsay, Paul Kobayashi, and Britney Wachter.