Your Economic Vote: Your Influence On Politics And The Economy

Your Economic Vote: Your Influence On Politics And The Economy

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(Minor updates: August, 2007; November 9, 2007; August, 2008; Added recipefactory.net link 2011; Added update May 1, 2012)

Update, May 1, 2012

I wrote most of this in the 1990's, just as the internet was starting to become mainstream. It was supplimented with a zine form that was given away. Since then, the connections between daily human needs such as food, shelter, heat, clothings and transportation, and disease, injustice and environmental distruction have become much more transparent. Books such as "The China Study," "Deadly Spin," "Healthy At 100" and "Edible Wild Plants," along with films like "Forks Over Knives," "Sick, Fat and Nearly Dead," and "Doctor Burzynski" underscore the fact that how we choose to eat, exercise, sleep and take control over our what we can do to stay healthy and become more autonomous has a profound effect on our own health and energy, as well as in reducing the required resources, thereby reducing competition for these resources and reducing the revenue flow to some of the more destructive forces on the planet.

My personal health, which wasn't particularly bad to begin with, has improved dramatically as if travelling back in time to a younger age. My story is typical.

It is time consuming to connect the moving target dots between our daily life support and events such as oil spills (BP in Gulf, etc.), Murdoch cell phone hacking, wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Nigeria, etc.), global warming, worldwide erosion of privacy rights and other civil rights, as well as a large swath of unneccessary injustice and environmental destruction, in part due to corruption funded, mostly unwittingly, by us. Yes, it is time consuming. But once you see the connections, it is very compelling. The combination of personal health and wealth benefits along with the mitigation of so many of the world's most pressing problems is a compelling motive to take action. My personal action has been to commute using my own physical energy (bicycling since 1996), dramatically reduce the resources required for my food (nearly vegetarian for over a decade and vegan since June, 2011), and avocation including making music, dancing and connecting with Playback Theater. This may sound somewhat illogical or random to the uninitiated. Some of what follows may help explain, but most of this is nearly 2 decades old now, though still apropos. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to connect the dots a little better in the coming months.