Here at Armistice, we’ve been discussing the impact of new technologies on teenage communication. These forms of technology include texting, cell phone use, myspace, and facebook. We’ve been interested in the implications of these forms of communication on the development of normal human interaction. Are we losing crucial skills because the only way we talk to one another is through texts and social networking sites?

We came up with a list of pros and cons. Particularly in light of the recent election and crisis in Iran, we’ve had a chance to see new uses for sites like Facebook and Twitter. When international journalists were not allowed into Iran to cover the political situation, citizens in the country were able to communicate with the world via these sources.

This guerilla communication can put the power of information right in the hands of the people. Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election thanks in part to community organizing through the internet. Texting and new websites give people opportunities to interact on new levels with people all over the world in an inexpensive way. As teens growing up in an Internet age, we have access to more information than any generation previous. In a sense, there is no part of the world off limits to us when we use these technologies.

On the flip side, such technologies can create problems. The issue of explicit messages being sent by cell phone, or “sexting” is disrupting many social conventions and creating an emotionally absent environment for an intimate practice. Sexting is removing the actual connection of sex. Technology can take people out of the present and place them in an alternative reality that removes them from real life.

Also, while it’s true that important political movements have been supported by the internet, the majority of the people using social sites or text messages are not. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but it can be. Think Kwame Kilpatrick. At this point in the development of technology, we haven’t decided as a society what the etiquette rules should be. Cell phone policies at high schools differ. Laws about cell phone use are unclear or nonexistent. In this way as well, we are never completely removed from these new technologies. They are forever around us, distracting us, and making it difficult to connect with people on an intimate level.

It’s our challenge to find a way to use technology in a positive way and detract from the negatives that come with the use of technology. As a teen activist group we want to use technology to bring people together; to facilitate change in a positive way. As the first generation to grow up with ipods, laptops, and Facebook, it’s our responsibility to define how to use them, when to use them, and create ways to make these technologies work for us.

This one hasn’t appeared in the zine yet, but might end up in the next issue. It’s an op-ed on the economy; enjoy!

As an eighteen-year-old, I am faced with a nebulous future after college and grad school. In fact, the only certainty is the tens of thousands of dollars of debt I will accumulate in the course of my education. Even with this education, I cannot be confident a job will be available for me when I leave school. My only consolation is that I have a few years for the job market to improve before venturing into it.

Still, our economic structure has sufficient holes to make me wary of my employment prospects no matter when I graduate. Without a major overhaul of our economic system, the United States is condemned to repeat a boom-and-bust cycle characterized by the dominance of the upper class and Wall Street.

In the corporate world, a lack of regulation leads to a short-term focus that sacrifices long-term economic health. Before the current crisis, a massive deregulation took place in the banking sector, allowing credit to flow far too freely.

The federal government deserves the blame for allowing this to happen. It began with Reagan, who passed his dangerous legacy of economic deregulation on to Clinton and both Bushes. All the while, Congress stood largely mute.

They now have an opportunity to compensate for their inaction, to remake the system. New regulation is needed, but the economy cannot be looked at in isolation. It is a product, the end result of the investments we choose to make in schools, green technology, infrastructure, healthcare, and more. These are the true fundamentals of our economy; without them, our nation will continue to decline.

Some would argue that massive spending in these areas is impossible, that we, the richest nation on earth, simply cannot afford to care for our citizens. The deficit is far too large as it currently stands, and greater efficiency and accountability in government spending can only do so much. Higher taxes are inevitable-but there are many who can afford to pay. With one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the industrialized world and an extremely wealthy upper class, the United States has vast reserves of untapped riches.

This wealth is currently not being put to the most effective possible use. Many Americans lack the resources to reach their full potential; if given the means to do so, they would be able to contribute far more to our nation than is currently the case.

The rich will attempt to protect their assets by claiming that they “worked” for that money, and some of them have. But is their work so much more valuable than that of the middle and lower classes, who put forth just as much effort and yet receive less? Eighty percent of the country controls less than twenty percent of our wealth; they deserve far better than what they have. If our economy is to become strong once more, this is where it must grow.

The world has changed; what once sufficed to keep our country strong no longer will. The modern American youth must have a college degree to enter the workforce, yet many of them must take on crushing amounts of debt to pay for their education. Our new working class will be much weaker with this anchor around our necks, ill-equipped to deal with the challenges we will face. By acting now, we can prevent this.

We have an opportunity to destroy the old model of corporate power, to grow a healthy and educated citizenry that would become the dominant workforce of the twenty-first century. I look at my generation and see apathy and desperation; we can see the system is broken-but I also see our vast potential.

A democracy is only as strong as its people; if the average American is well cared for and educated, then our nation will be far more resilient than before.

-Keagan Irrer

“You can end your life in ten minutes time. That quick…it can happen to the smartest person in the world,” said Bruce Godschalk, a recent exoneree from prison. Mr. Godschalk, like many others in America, was convicted of a crime he did not commit. In May of 1987, the 26 year old Mr. Godschalk was convicted of 2 counts of forcible rape, and 2 counts of burglary in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Sentenced to 11-22 years, Mr. Godschalk spent 15 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. He spent 7 more fighting with the prosecution for rights to the evidence that was sure to exonerate him of the crime, and was finally exonerated on February 14, 2002. How did this happen? How was an innocent young man jailed so quickly for such a terrible crime? Mr. Godschalk explained that it began with his own sister. The police were offering a $5,000 reward for capture of the suspect for the crimes. All Mr. Godschalk’s sister, a drug addict, saw was the money that she could use to buy drugs. For this reason, his sister falsely tipped off the police that her own brother was the wanted suspect. The police swooped down on the 26 year old Mr. Godschalk, and asked him to come to station and answer some questions. They told him that as soon as he answered them, he could go home. “I was put in a small room,” Mr. Godschalk narrated, “and that’s intimidating.” He was interrogated by the two police officers. The officers, wanting to close the case, fed Mr. Godschalk bits and bits of information about the crime, and kept telling him that as soon as he told them what they wanted to know, he could go home. “They basically told me, ‘you don’t need a lawyer’—hard to believe, huh?,” Mr. Godschalk said. He soon had enough information from the police officers to do what they wanted him to do all along: Mr. Godschalk made a false confession, thinking that he could then go home. Little did he know. The officers took him to court, he was quickly convicted on the basis of his false confession, and immediately jailed. In Mr. Godschalk’s words, jail was “lower than Hell.” After 15 years, however, Mr. Godschalk came across the Innocence Project. He learned that the Project was a non-profit, based out of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, which worked to exonerate and free wrongly convicted prisoners based on DNA evidence. Like about a hundred others every month, Mr. Godschalk wrote to the Innocence Project, explaining his plight and asking for help. Even though the Project’s lawyers have about 180 cases, they accepted Mr. Godschalk’s, because they believed that there was, in fact, DNA evidence capable of exonerating him. It took 7 years to get rights to the evidence that would exonerate Mr. Godschalk, because the prosecution knew that the evidence did have the power to free Mr. Godschalk. However, when it was finally obtained, Mr. Godschalk was exonerated. He was now 48 years old. Of surviving those 22 years as a convict, Mr. Godschalk explained, “I’ll tell you what kept me motivated. It was love…for my family…faith, love. Did I lose hope? Yeah, I did…because of the confession. For a while, I really did lose hope.” Since 1989, there have been 223 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. Added together, those 223 innocent convicts have spent over 2700 years in jail for crimes they did not commit.17 of those 223 served time on death row. The average age of the exonerees at conviction is 26. For 15 years, the Innocence Project has worked to pinpoint trends in reasons for wrongful conviction, and employed policy analysts who work to prevent more wrongful convictions. These analysts have found that 77% of the cases of wrongful conviction involved misidentification by eyewitnesses. Unreliable or fraudulent forensic evidence played a role in 65% of the 223 cases. False confessions played a role in 25% of these cases. The Innocence Project recommends legislation requiring interrogations to be recorded, to prevent such false confessions. “I’m strong…very strong. Up here,” Mr. Godschalk said. “They can take your body from you, but not your mind.” Mr. Godschalk lost what could have been the best years of his life. Between the ages of 26 and 48, many would have gotten a degree, gotten a job, and gotten married. Mr. Godschalk re-entered society itself at 48. When asked if he thought the United States justice system was corrupt, Mr. Godschalk answered “no.” When asked if he still harbored bitterness about his false conviction and years spent in prison, Mr.Godschalk replied, “no. If you do, it’ll just eat you up inside.” The Innocence Project continually works for people like Mr. Godschalk, who have had their lives taken away from them. For more information, contact www.innocenceproject.org, to help keep people like Mr. Godschalk able to say that the U.S. system is not corrupt, and to give people back their lives, and let them start again. Laura Hogikyan

Everyone knows that politicians lie and cheat their way to the top. “Playing politics” is an acceptable accuse for some decisions that politicians make. I myself have rationalized the actions of politicians by saying that if they didn’t “play politics,” they wouldn’t win. However, once you start “mudslinging” or running a negative campaign, you may be taking your politics too far. It is common these days to run a negative campaign; finding the fault of another candidate and showing them to the public is an important part of politics. In many cases this is an appropriate form of campaigning, but when do we know when we have taken it too far?
Negative campaigning has existed almost as long as politics, but it really came to light in Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential campaigning in the form of a commercial implying that his opponent, Barry Goldwater, would start nuclear war. Another notable ad was the Willie Horton ad used by George H. W. Bush in his campaign against Micheal Dukakis in 1988. This ad implied that Dukakis was soft on crime because he supposedly let a known rapist have weekend passes from jail, which turned out to be false. With new technological developments, politicians were able to make “robocalls” which are where a voice recording calls your home and asks if you would vote for candidate X if they did X. For example, you may get a call that asks you if you would vote for said candidate if they beat their wife. The candidate may or may not beat their wife, and they didn’t say that they did, they just implied it. An notable example happened in the 2000 republican primaries when George W. Bush used robocalls against John McCain, causing him to lose South Carolina. These robocalls asked “would you vote for John McCain if you knew he had an illegitimate black child?” McCain’s wife had adopted a little girl from Bangladesh and using these images of the family, George W. Bush twisted the truth to try to win the nomination. After McCain’s loss, McCain swore he would never use robocalls in any of his campaigns. However, in the 2008 campaign against Barack Obama, McCain used robocalls to further tie the democratic candidate with William Ayers, a “terrorist” with whom Obama had no connection.
What was shown to us in this last election is that people aren’t buying the negative campaign ads anymore. Everyone should be thankful that the American population is smart enough now to see through ads like these. Hopefully this will be the start of a new age of politics; honest and upstanding!

Well, I can dream!

It’s the theme for the next issue. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing-though we will likely have a few articles on global warming, nuclear proliferation, etc. We’ll also do articles on how the world could change drastically for the better. As usual, send any submissions to armistice.zine@gmail.com or 120 1/2 W. Liberty, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104.
We will, of course, look at submissions that aren’t on the theme, but it will improve your chances of acceptance if your submission does coincide with the theme.

We were on WCBN on Sunday from eleven to twelve. Sorry I didn’t post about it before it happened, but we’ll be on the air again. I’m not sure exactly when, but when I find out I’ll tell you about it.

At Cafe Ambrosia, 326 Maynard, from 7:30-10:30 p.m.-but feel free to stop by anytime.

See the importance of Iraq and what originated in Iraq that we still use today!

There will be chessboards open for competitors and an art display submitted by local youth expressing their perspectives of peace as it relates to connections between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

Michigan Peaceworks intern Zaineb Al-Kalby will present a brief history of Iraq with some Iraqi snacks to go with it. So come join us to play chess and take a little bite into Iraq!

Sorry I haven’t been updating much over the past week. We’re pretty busy with the anniversary of the Iraq war coming up on March 21st; we’ve got a protest going on outside the Michigan Union at 1:00 p.m.

The new issue has just come in. If you want a copy, you can pick one up at 120 1/2 West Liberty, Ann Arbor, Michigan-or you can send us a request for one at armistice.zine@gmail.com and we will mail you a copy. I will also be posting portions of the zine on this blog, which I will try to update every Tuesday and Thursday from now on.

It will be going to the printer’s shortly, so we should have it within the next couple of weeks. But if you can’t wait, here’s a sample:

Reaganism

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Congratulations, Democrats. The Republicans have have become so atrociously incompetent that the voters elected you in a landslide in spite of a mere 20% support for a Congress you currently run. This election was handed to you on a silver platter, but despite how disatrous the last eight years have been, Republicans avoided a full-scale blowout and are already regrouping. They are constantly reassuring themselves that the United States remains a “center-right” country, and many believe that they lost this year because they weren’t conservative enough. Rumors abound of right-wing darling Sarah Palin making a run for the presidency in 2012; if successful, it would realize the worst nightmares of many Democrats. They can avoid this debacle by going back to their roots-liberalism. Since Ronald Reagan triumphed in 1980, his philosophy has governed the country. Even the lone Democrat in the White House since then, Bill Clinton, has been severely limited by Reagan’s legacy (see health care reform). But now that method of governing has led us into an abyss: two badly run wars financed by heavy borrowing, an economy in free fall and crumbling entitlement systems, a massive national debt and the dire global warming crisis. It is ludicrous to suggest that the United States remains a predominantly conservative country after conservatism has been so heavily discredited and Barack Obama has been put in the White House, but liberals must remain wary. The United States isn’t really leaning left at this point either; the country doesn’t know where the hell it wants to go. We now have an opportunity to prove that liberalism works, that higher taxes on corporations and the uber-rich actually benefit the country, that the government can take the lead on protecting the environment, that the economy must be regulated for its own good, that diplomacy is the best method for settling disputes, that our education and infrastructure systems can no longer simply be left to crumble and that civil liberties must be protected. As Bush has so masterfully proven, these are not opinions but cold, hard, facts. This should be the election cycle that historians mark as the death of Reaganism. But if the Obama administration doesn’t deliver, lacking a viable alternative, America will turn right back to the same failed conservative principles that have been destroying us for the past twenty-eight years. The greatest share of the blame has been going to the Bush/Cheney administration; most Americans don’t recognize that Reaganism itself has been proven unworkable. And that’s why this election cycle is destined to be pivotal no matter what its final result. Obama and the Democrats can deliver on their promises to bring this country a new era of prosperity, or they will fail and turn America back to the conservative principles that could eventually destroy it.

Carl Safina wrote an interesting essay in Tuesday’s New York Times about the semantics of evolution. Here’s an excerpt:

“By propounding “Darwinism,” even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one “theory.” The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” The point is that making a master teacher into a sacred fetish misses the essence of his teaching. So let us now kill Darwin.”

Here’s the link if you’re interested:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/science/10essa.html?_r=1&ref=science