citizen's statement

I try to participate as a citizen of United States mostly on a local scale. I believe participation in a small way honors the long history that my family has in this country and also honors the more recent sacrifices the immigrant members of my family have made for their belief that a better life could be found in the U.S. I am proud that others around the world still see this country as the land of opportunity, I hope they always will, whatever burden that places on us, it is what we owe our immigrant ancestors to make room for the next group and allow them their chance, that is all our grandfathers wanted. You may have noticed the Change Congress logo/link on my homepage and here. It is placed as flag of my support for this citizen effort to reform the way congressional campaigns are funded and to make our democracy more transparent. This issue stands firmly in the way of making any meaningful changes to government and I believe our government needs to change. I believe that our government needs to be more democratic, politicians need to respond to their constituencies and not to special interests. I have a number of other concerns as a citizen including: climate change, public health care, food safety and nutrition, net neutrality, media reform, voting fraud, farmland protection, the war in Iraq, the continuous threat of war and nuclear proliferation, a number of green topics and a number of local issues. Although this is primarily an artist's site and focuses on my art, I intend to express my opinion on some of these public topics here.

As a society I think we are becoming very tribal. We are huddling around our blue TV screen fires while we listen to stories of death and destruction. We are fearful of anyone outside the ring of our firelight to the point of not even talking to our neighbors. We are losing the simple courtesies that make community life pleasant. Too many of our conversations include talk of "others" and how "they" are causing our problems when we should be looking at our own behaviors. I believe we form governments and communities to make our lives easier. We shouldn't scurry away from these institutions with distrust and fear; back to the comfort of our blue TV campfires. Let's raise the level of public civility and public discourse about the very serious issues that we are currently facing.

More to come…