Recently I was talking to a friend of mine, and I asked her if she was scared by anything the government was doing. She replied, “I’m too mad at my momma to care.” And of course, we all get mad at our parents from time to time, but I think that this quote really illustrates one of the problems with our movement right now. Many people, especially other youth, feel like that the war on Iraq and the war on civil liberties are something to oppose in your spare time, when there’s no other more pressing concerns like dating or parents to worry about.

And so, I would like the pose this question to the general public: “Doesn’t this scare anyone else?” When I read articles about all the crazy shit that the government is trying to pull while the wool of anti-terrorism is over our eyes, it scares the living daylights out of me, and think that I’m a sufficiently normal person that most people would be similarly scared if they read the same articles.

But they don’t. And that’s the problem. Most of the people in this country don’t know what’s going on. They believe the government rhetoric about how the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and the Homeland Security Act are about protecting the country from the evildoers out there.

It’s not, though. And if we want to build popular support for our defense of civil liberties and for our opposition to the war on the people of Iraq, we can’t just tell people it’s wrong, we have to give them the information that they don’t know, that they’re not exposed to. We have to oppose the government’s crackdown on the rights of freedom of information by taking those rights for ourselves. Protesting even when they say we can’t. Printing the flyers they don’t want us to. Distributing them where we’re not allowed to. Because if we just trust to the established channels for distributing information about the government, people will continue to oppose us, because they’re only hearing what the government says, and they’re only seeing what the government shows them.