I Am Grassroots

I Am Grassroots
I am the organizer of a national grassroots event in Washington DC coming up September 6, in Freedom Plaza. Named after it's explicit purpose,
“GRASSROOTS FOR OBAMA IN WASHINGTON DC“.

It began quietly one evening in June, in between moving the sprinkler around my garden. Sincere and passionate for freedom, I have sat watching CNN and watched the talking heads discuss the issues. I wanted to do more. In the course of an evening with the help of the BarackObama.com site, I planned a national event to bring grassroots together in our nation's capital. I am one of those grassroots, the unlikely organizer of a national event. I use to be a Republican. I really wasn't, but I voted that way, sucked into the fear campaign. My parents were conservative, and I believed that lined up with our forefather's plan, smaller government to remain free.

But as I got older, I realized that the notion that Republicans empower the little guy to do well by himself so that government doesn't have to was not really a Republican thing at all.

We have an insincere government. Behind the scenes we have a machine made up of powerful CEO's, powerful lobbyists, and powerful interests internationally. The politicians are not that powerful in a system such as ours. Money runs our country and the world. If you have money, you can get elected. To stay elected, you do what the money says or you do not remain there. Call it corporate greed, Trilateral influence, but this is the way it is.

The Iraq war was a design. It is a brash notion that was an implementation of the work of a few.

In the late 1990's a group which had been the power structure behind the former President George Bush, got together and wrote a document. "Project For A New American Century". Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfewitz, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were the authors of this plan. This was a blueprint to create a new American Empire following the shake up of the Soviet Union. It said that as the Soviet Union declined, America was the only superpower left in the world and that we needed to move aggressively to use our power to spread American values, and to increase US corporate interests. They justified this foreign policy interchangeably because what would make America strong, would be "good" for the world.

I first heard of this well known document and association as I sat on the couch watching us go off into war with Iraq. Something I had supported, believing the administration must know something that we did not know and therefore it must be the right thing to do. It was a special on the history channel, which documented well the "Project For A New American Century", and the roles each of these people played in this war. After 911, this already conceived blueprint went into play, opportunistically.

America finds itself 5 years later in a war which is by definition not a war to win. We do not fight an enemy in Iraq, we are fighting an insurgency which developed after we invaded a sovereign nation to take down a dictator. It was a design to invade a country with a known bad guy which had an economy of oil, a commodity which surrounds financial interests of not only the people behind the "Project For A New American Century," but the administration itself. Today, there are no bid contractors, and no bid oil contracts being established. The American Superpower has shredded it's place as a nation which stands for benevolence. It is obvious to the world now that we were aggressive to invade Iraq to implement this notion of increasing US corporate interests, particularly oil. As emerging nations place increasing demands on the world oil supply, the designers of this war justified our aggressive approach to put America first in the food chain. At the same time we committed troops, funds, and precious time to this quagmire in Iraq, our leaders blindly ignored the underlying problems of global warming, and the obvious losing battle of America's dependence on foreign oil for our energy needs. Our very security and reputation around the world is in jeopardy because of a few small thinkers with personal financial interests. The entire financial system is in disarray because of the deregulation of banks, again corporate greed making money at the expense of the bigger picture, "America".

I most passionately support Barack Obama because he represents the new America. The one shining hope to change our government and the world. It is not until the American people can be put back into the equation that elections will become democratic and represent the people. The BarackObama.com website has begun to do just that. We have a means to connect and to raise the money necessary to place corporate greed, lobbying interests outside the fence. I believe this last administration has shown us how dangerously close we have come to losing our democracy.

Obama is a decent man who speaks from the heart. But he too could become a puppet for corporate interests if his only means to become elected or to be re elected was through these channels. It is the people, the blogs, the grassroots fundraisers, the voices for change that are stepping out of our complacency to take back America.

We have a little gathering of us, the grassroots from all across America ,September 6, 2008, Freedom Plaza, Pennsylvania Avenue, just down from the White House. Hope to see you there.
Jeanie Schneider