About dscrima

dscrima

Oh, baby dumplin'

Location:

brooklyn (11211, USA)

Joined on:

05/05/08

Occupation:

student

IM Contact:

but daniela said

Contact:

danielascrima@gmail.com

• not yet rated

  Politics

  "I know that victory is sweet, even deep in the cheap seats."

  In the year 2000, I did not recognize the consequences of things. I thought about getting my learners permit, about turning sixteen the next year. I thought about what I wanted to do with my hair color, and different ways to not fit in at school. Despite the fact that I still scribbled anarchy signs on my notebook covers, I was not really politically involved. I said nasty things about the government, and I read about conspiracy theories. I thought to myself "You will stay like this forever," and I thought that this could be a good thing, that I would remain some bohemian child in Florida, always saying stuff about the fucked up system. The year 2000 sounded like the future, so I never grasped that it was really happening, I just treated it like the preamble of something else, some other life I would soon get to live. Respectively, I lost my virginity in a backyard, I learned how to fold my body so it would fit through my bedroom window.
  Of course I knew that it was an election year, that it was the new millenium. I also knew that my computer did not crash after Y2K and that the boys you sleep with in backyards would not always call you the next day. My father was for George W. Bush and my mother was not. My father said things about property taxes as his reasoning, later on he would say he considered himself a conservative. I got the boy who slept with me to become my boyfriend, and because of this, I thought I could do anything. I had some feeling that I wanted to change the world, but I also had the feeling that I would be sixteen forever, that not man or law could stop me.

  My boyfriend's mother, like my own, was a supporter of Al Gore. These were the years of mothers, we all adored our mothers and feared our fathers. My boyfriend's grandmother hung a picture of George Bush and his wife Barbara on the kitchen fridge. She took me aside pulling my arm, and told me the greatness of that man's qualities, and how they all would have rubbed off on his son. I remembered George Bush being president vaguely, I had a memory of watching Barbra Bush reading children's novels to a kindergarten class, and because I was also in kindergarten I ended up liking her very much. I did not understand that anything had real consequences, all of my feelings were about the next ten minutes, the next ten hours. I had no concept of the next two- let alone four, or eight years.

  The day to vote came and suddenly the spotlight was on Florida. Everyone was upset for one reason or another, and everyone was paying attention. I was paying attention, but I also was thinking of getting my drivers license in a month and a half, I was thinking about the girl my boyfriend sat next to in Algebra. When the results came in I was at a birthday dinner with my boyfriends family, a bunch of us left the table at The Macaroni Grill to stand next to a wide screen television. My boyfriend's mother was near tears and a woman next to her said "He is just one man. How bad good it be?" And I had no idea, really about anything, I had no idea what any of this would mean.

  And after that night, things changed. I started listening. I felt scared after September 11th, I wanted to donate blood like everyone else, but I was not eighteen yet. New York seemed far away, this place that only existed in books and on television, a place where I could never live. I felt sick and sad, like everyone else. I don't know if I opposed the war because of something someone told me, or because of books that I had read, but I knew that I was against it. On March 20th of 2003, I watched the war begin on the television screen. All I remember is a black screen with lights going off in the corners, I guess they were bombs, I guess I was watching CNN in my childhood bedroom. IMing friends online, I typed "is this really happening?"

  In 2003, I left Florida. I blamed Florida for so much, I really blamed Florida for my whole life. Many of us did. I spent my freshman year at Kent State University, learning how to get drunk and cry in front of the May 4th Memorial. Instead of attending classes, I read in bed. I believed I was in a place that was polarized in 1970, that I cold still do whatever I wanted. When I was sent back to Florida in 2004, I campaigned hard. I heard so many people say "Anyone but Bush" and about how we had to pick the lesser of two evils, but I did not want to think like that. I just wanted something to be different. And when my friends would tell me that they were going to vote for Bush, I would become irate. Flinging my arms in the air "this is the first election that we can vote in! What the hell is wrong with you?" I'd pick friends with any of them, it did not matter how long I knew them, or if they were making excuses about voting like their parents vote. When George Bush was re-elected, I was working in the Clearwater Public Library, I could see the ocean through the large glass windows. I fell to the ground, and in my most dramatic fashion, I wept. I cried on the floor next to stacks of books in a back room. The books were all damaged, they were going to be thrown out. They couldn't even be donated, the library had no use for them, and at the time, neither did I.

  And I became defeated. My mother drank wine at night- my mother drank red wine every night. I could not blame Florida &I could not even really blame my peers, so I blamed myself. I started connecting point A to point B and back again. I tried to make straight lines. I tried to limit how often I watched the news, I wanted a break. There I was 19, and ready to give up. Hurricane Katrina had happened, Bush had been elected, and then came the waves. I did not know if I should calmly wait for some apocalypse. I knew I had the right to vote, I had my drivers license, I had my theories about the government. I started planning for some life where I could make a difference, where I could help to change the world. I could not lose my virginity in a backyard again, nor could I recount any votes in Florida. I had no time machines, and I had nearly no answers. I hadnt scribbled an anarchy sign in quite sometime, and I stopped talking shit the way I used to. And then it was just like it kind of hit me one day, that things did not always have to be like this, that things did have consequences &that I could not only recognize them, but determine them also.

  Comments (0)

  Posted on June 30, 2008 by - dscrima

• 1 vote

  Politics

  in the unlikely story that is america, there has never been anything false about hope

  <lj>
  <object height='355' width='425'><param></param><param></param><embed src='http://www.youtube.com/v/zrp-v2tHaDo&amp;hl=en' height='355' width='425'></embed></object>
  </lj>

  It is so easy to be dismissive, to not be involved, to think "this does not apply to me." It is so easy to think that your vote does not count, that your voice cannot be heard- that none of it matters. We are a generation that has no draft impending up on us, we have our faces buried in our cell phones. We get our news from Facebook feeds, from John Stewart on the Daily Show. We maybe argue with our parents and the way that they vote. Maybe we did not have Myspace in high school, but we got in soon afterward, and that is kind of how we exist. Online. Our fingers plugged into some keyboard, sending signals out to somewhere and still we believe we can provide no change? That it is just too much? Too terrifying?

  With all this technology, education, and resources we have available and then still- still we have the nerve to act as if we cannot have hope? As if having hope would mean admitting stupidity, or admitting defeat? When did hope become synonymous to naivety? When did caring become so uncool- so uncool that we could not stop for ten minutes, not even for ten seconds to think outside of ourselves.

  And yes, so maybe, maybe you can say that all we hear is the same things on Fox News and CNN- that it's not the truth, that democrats and republicans are the same, that your voice doesn't matter- that it never will. Yes, it is very easy to say all of those things and then to walk away- but what does that do? What does that help? To be a coward, to not put in any effort. If you don't feel like you're getting the true story on CNN, explore your options, take the initiative. I am sure your grandmother doesn't do too well using a google search engine, but I am sure you can. I am sure that if you try you could hear how it's said every where around the world, that you could find the news from many different perspectives, that right in front of you, on the screen next to myspace.com you could find blogs, radio programs, newspapers and endless articles that could help you form an opinion. That could help us stop being a generation that is full of excuses and indifference.

  Do something. Do anything. Yell at me for writing this, make a phone call, read a translation of a foreign paper, go see someone speak at a local college. Just stop saying that there is no way that anything will change.

  **********

  If you live in North Carolina or Indiana, I hope you vote for Barack tomorrow. I have already been bumping heads with my friends about this, but I just don't understand why people don't want change and how people my age are really so jaded and proud to have this attitude where they keep insisting that government can't change. I hear so many people say to me "do you really think things could ever change?" and they say it with this tone where they sound so exhausted and exasperated and fed up, and all I want to scream is "why don't you try? Why don't you at least try and do something to make change happen, or believe in something enough to let change happen?

  I feel the same way about people voting for Hillary Clinton right now as I did when people voted for George W. Bush four years ago, I look at my peers and I just do not understand. Hillary Clinton runs this campaign where she just acts like a monster, where she talks shit and lets out the occasional "shame on you Barack Obama," and then donates five million dollars to herself and I just do not get it. I do not get how this resonates with anyone my age, how they can look at her speak and feel hope, I am just not exactly sure, because when I listen to her speeches, I find them unsettling.

  After the results came in in Pennsylvania, I listened to her speech and then Obama's speech, and I could not understand how anyone could listen to what Clinton was saying and feel good- she offered up some brief history lesson, let her fan base let out chants of "Yes She Will," and had some kind of gleam in her eye that just did not resonate with me. Really, I just cannot understand it. I watch Barack speak and it feels good, and it feels possible and it feels real.

  I have even heard people get upset and say "Oh it is just trendy to like Obama," with this whole fuck this attitude as if to say that if people like it then it must not be the best option to do it? Or what even? I have sat around with my friends and I have heard some of the things they have to say and it surprises me. I mean it feels different here in New York, but when I talk to my family in Ohio- when my aunt tells me she is voting for Hillary because "it takes a Clinton to clean up a Bush's mess" I imagine this dynasty of Bush then Clinton then Bush then Clinton then Bush, then maybe Clinton again and I don't know what's happened or how this could be possible.

  It seems right now that the democratic party is hurting itself, that again we are seeming unorganized that we don't have someone up and running and John McCain sits their smiling, telling some war story.

  I do not think I know everything about politics, I don't think I am an expert with any of this. But I feel very strongly about this. I feel very strongly that my peers should step up and make some kind of difference. I feel like we have to do more right now.

  I believe that we can change this, I believe that even one step is such a big step. I believe this so strongly. I know that I want to get my hands in it- that I want to get my fingers deep in it, I want the dirt under my nails, I want my hands to bleed raw and I know that it will feel good. I know that any amount of education, any amount of change, and any amount of hope is everything. Maybe that is all I know.

  <lj>
  <object height='355' width='425'><param></param><param></param><embed src='http://www.youtube.com/v/jjXyqcx-mYY&amp;hl=en' height='355' width='425'></embed></object>
  </lj>

  I am a registered voter in the state of Florida and my vote did not count directly, I hope that your vote will.

  Comments (1)

  Posted on May 5, 2008 by - dscrima

• 4 votes

  Politics

  response to  andrewprice's post Meet The Candidates

  in the unlikely story that is america, there has never been anything false about hope

  It is so easy to be dismissive, to not be involved, to think "this does not apply to me." It is so easy to think that your vote does not count, that your voice cannot be heard- that none of it matters. We are a generation that has no draft impending up on us, we have our faces buried in our cell phones. We get our news from Facebook feeds, from John Stewart on the Daily Show. We maybe argue with our parents and the way that they vote. Maybe we did not have Myspace in high school, but we got in soon afterward, and that is kind of how we exist. Online. Our fingers plugged into some keyboard, sending signals out to somewhere and still we believe we can provide no change? That it is just too much? Too terrifying?

  With all this technology, education, and resources we have available and then still- still we have the nerve to act as if we cannot have hope? As if having hope would mean admitting stupidity, or admitting defeat? When did hope become synonymous to naivety? When did caring become so uncool- so uncool that we could not stop for ten minutes, not even for ten seconds to think outside of ourselves.

  And yes, so maybe, maybe you can say that all we hear is the same things on Fox News and CNN- that it's not the truth, that democrats and republicans are the same, that your voice doesn't matter- that it never will. Yes, it is very easy to say all of those things and then to walk away- but what does that do? What does that help? To be a coward, to not put in any effort. If you don't feel like you're getting the true story on CNN, explore your options, take the initiative. I am sure your grandmother doesn't do too well using a google search engine, but I am sure you can. I am sure that if you try you could hear how it's said every where around the world, that you could find the news from many different perspectives, that right in front of you, on the screen next to myspace.com you could find blogs, radio programs, newspapers and endless articles that could help you form an opinion. That could help us stop being a generation that is full of excuses and indifference.

  Do something. Do anything. Yell at me for writing this, make a phone call, read a translation of a foreign paper, go see someone speak at a local college. Just stop saying that there is no way that anything will change.

  **********

  If you live in North Carolina or Indiana, I hope you vote for Barack tomorrow. I have already been bumping heads with my friends about this, but I just don't understand why people don't want change and how people my age are really so jaded and proud to have this attitude where they keep insisting that government can't change. I hear so many people say to me "do you really think things could ever change?" and they say it with this tone where they sound so exhausted and exasperated and fed up, and all I want to scream is "why don't you try? Why don't you at least try and do something to make change happen, or believe in something enough to let change happen?

  I feel the same way about people voting for Hillary Clinton right now as I did when people voted for George W. Bush four years ago, I look at my peers and I just do not understand. Hillary Clinton runs this campaign where she just acts like a monster, where she talks shit and lets out the occasional "shame on you Barack Obama," and then donates five million dollars to herself and I just do not get it. I do not get how this resonates with anyone my age, how they can look at her speak and feel hope, I am just not exactly sure, because when I listen to her speeches, I find them unsettling.

  After the results came in in Pennsylvania, I listened to her speech and then Obama's speech, and I could not understand how anyone could listen to what Clinton was saying and feel good- she offered up some brief history lesson, let her fan base let out chants of "Yes She Will," and had some kind of gleam in her eye that just did not resonate with me. Really, I just cannot understand it. I watch Barack speak and it feels good, and it feels possible and it feels real.

  I have even heard people get upset and say "Oh it is just trendy to like Obama," with this whole fuck this attitude as if to say that if people like it then it must not be the best option to do it? Or what even? I have sat around with my friends and I have heard some of the things they have to say and it surprises me. I mean it feels different here in New York, but when I talk to my family in Ohio- when my aunt tells me she is voting for Hillary because "it takes a Clinton to clean up a Bush's mess" I imagine this dynasty of Bush then Clinton then Bush then Clinton then Bush, then maybe Clinton again and I don't know what's happened or how this could be possible.

  It seems right now that the democratic party is hurting itself, that again we are seeming unorganized that we don't have someone up and running and John McCain sits their smiling, telling some war story.

  I do not think I know everything about politics, I don't think I am an expert with any of this. But I feel very strongly about this. I feel very strongly that my peers should step up and make some kind of difference. I feel like we have to do more right now.

  I believe that we can change this, I believe that even one step is such a big step. I believe this so strongly. I know that I want to get my hands in it- that I want to get my fingers deep in it, I want the dirt under my nails, I want my hands to bleed raw and I know that it will feel good. I know that any amount of education, any amount of change, and any amount of hope is everything. Maybe that is all I know.

  I am a registered voter in the state of Florida and my vote did not count directly, I hope that your vote will.

  Comments (5)

  Commented on May 5, 2008 by - dscrima