Tuesday, November 13, 2007

HW#30 Citizenship Symposium

On Tuesday November 6, I attended a session called "What Kind of Democracy Do We Want." The main speaker was Nancy Tobi. Nancy Tobi presented us with a slide show called "Citizens Gone Wild." To start off the speech she talked about Moses, being the leader of the democratic movement, and Lexington being the birthplace of American Liberty. "Moses was a poor humble refugee who did not get to see the fruits of his labor." I found this to be an interesting and descriptive quote. She also talked about the laws of checks and balances, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Also she says when government becomes destructive; the people have the right to offer. In 1788, the New Hampshire Constitution was formed, stating that the government derives from the people, and all men are born equally free. Her main subject was on election crime. It was "Means, Motive, and Opportunity." Means being the control of vote counts, motive being the control of the planet, and opportunity being the control of electoral mechanism. She went into detail on counting votes, data mining and political activities, and the "problem." The glitch, which was everything that has ever went wrong with the voting system. She ended the session with a quote that she repeated many times, "feel the wind at your back," meaning that everyone should get involved in the voting processes. Overall I thought her speech was alright, but for me hard to sit through because currently I am not that involved with politics and voting, but I soon hope to get into it.



On Thursday November 8th I attended another session at the citizenship symposium. This session was called "Citizenship and Responsibility." It started off with Katrina Sweat, the daughter of the main speaker Tom Lantos. She mainly gave us some background information on Tom. He was the only survivor of the Holocaust to ever be elected into the congress. At the age of 19, he came to America; in 1940 he received a scholarship to the University of Washington, and in 1980 decided to run for congress. When Tom got up to speak he started off by talking about the new president of France. He attended a session with the president of France as its main speaker. Tom mentions one of his quotes, "American says he did not teach men the idea of freedom, she taught men how to practice it." He talks about how all men were created equal, but that didn’t prevent them form having slaves. He views American history as a gradual closing of the hypocrisy of the reality of in which you live. On November 7th, the day before he came to speak for us, he mentions that they passed the employment of discrimination act. "Yesterday represented a dream come true for me." He was thrilled beyond words at the speech of the president of France. At the end Tom speaks about how our forthcoming president has two responsibilities, one being that he must bring everything together, and secondly they must rebuild prestige and respect for the US. I think that overall Tom's speech was great; I thought his story was very happy and interesting story. He was very passionate, and I’m sure his speech might have inspired some people.