Please read Erika Morningstar! OCCUPY!

Erika Morningstar

My Name is Journey Mani Wanji Zephier. I am 11 years old.
My Dad is Chief Blue Star Eagle, Ihanktonwan Dakota Nation.
I want to have a Kid to Kid talk, with all the Children in our World.
We have to WAKE UP! STAND UP!
I know if you are like me, You know things are really messed up on Earth right now.
This is OUR world, we will inherit this mess that the greedy grown-ups are making.
Look at what is happening to our food, Mother Earth can grow enough food to feed all the starving kids on Earth,
But Monsanto and big Corporations are making farmers grow crops that don't make seeds,
so people have to buy their seeds to grow more food.
And GMO's make people sick, some of them are poison,
I saw a video of kids in India who get rashes and sick from just walking through GMO soybeans to school.

And I'm only 11, but I get what taxes are.
How come I have to pay tax on my candy at the store,
but big companies like Exxon pay not taxes, or got big refunds?
And How come big companies like Exxon are allowed to pollute the Earth with oil and chemicals?
Greed is making companies cut down all our trees and rainforests,
it's making them dig up all the gold and gifts from the Earth and destroy the land,
it's making them create GMO crops that makes farmers not able to save seeds,
and are destrying all the natural crops and plants on the planet.
Greed is making millions of kids starve to death,
and making Nations go to war to fight over oil and resources.
I don't own video games, because I know that kids in poor nations,
are paid almost nothing to build them, and they have to work all day,
and cannot go to school. ANd, They teach us how to KILL. For fun and points. That is just plain wrong.

How come big companies are making it illegal for farmers to grow organic food and livestock?
Corporations like Tyson make big farms where they treat the animals bad, like keeping chickens in the dark and poop their whole life.
And then we are supposed to eat that?
I was taught that animals are sacred, too. If we have to eat them, we treat them with love, and pray for their Spirit,
we don't torture them and then eat it, that is bad medicine, that goes into our bodies.
I am sad that our planet is really in trouble, we are tearing apart Mother Earth,
and she is the only planet we have. I can feel the Earth crying when I listen.
CHILDREN OF THE EARTH, STAND UP!

Tell the grown-ups, they are ruining our planet and then leaving it for US to fix.
Go out and make your signs, protest at your school, stand up with your friends for OUR future.
The police cannot arrest 700 kids who are standing there like they will the teenagers.
We are the voice of the 7th Generation in Native American prophecy.
That means WE ARE THE CHANGE, we are the ones who will save the Earth and make a time of peace.
That means something to me.
You may not hear me. You may just want to play video games that kill people on the TV for fun.
But that is what the big companies and corporations and military WANTS you to do.
They WAnt you to be asleep.
WAKE UP!
PLEASE!!!!! If we do not stop the grown-ups, there will be nothing left for us.
WAKE UP, PLEEEEAAASE!

WE are the CHANGE.
We can do this with LOVE. Make your Voices heard. STAND UP!
Grown-ups want us to belive we have no power. That is a LIE.
We are awake, and if you are like me, you KNOW you came to Earth to CHANGE THINGS.
Become a warrior. A warrior for the Earth. A Warrior of LOVE and truth.
We are all one. I know that is truth. We are One with the Earth.
Become a Warrior of Love. STAND UP!

 

Getting More Women to Run for Office

—By Kevin Drum

| Thu Sep. 15, 2011 7:54 AM PDT

A new paper uses a clever design to figure out if women are more willing to compete in teams than as individuals. The answer, in a laboratory test setting, is a resounding yes:

• Even though men and women performed equally well on the task, 81% of men chose to compete as individuals compared with 28% of women.
• When participants competed in teams, the gender competition gap shrank by 31 percentage points to 22%, with 67% of men choosing to enter the competition compared with 45% of women.

One of the clever parts of the study design was a series of different competitions that tried to untease the cause of different gender preferences. The result, say the authors, is that it really is a true difference in competitive preference, not just an artifact of risk aversion, feedback aversion, or confidence. Does this make a difference in the real world? Sure it does:

Countries that have party-list proportional representation, in which voters select a slate of candidates put forth by a party, generally have more than twice the female representation rate in their legislatures than countries that have single-member districts. Two countries that elect some members under each system, Germany and New Zealand, illustrate the differences most clearly. In the 1994 German election, 13% of the representatives elected from single-member districts were women, while 39% of the representatives elected from party-list districts were women. In New Zealand in 1996, the corresponding numbers were 15% and 45% for the single-member and party-list districts, respectively. These differences occur primarily because women are more likely to be candidates under proportional representation.

As I recall, we have much the same phenomenon in the United States. Once they decide to run, women generally do as well as men in political campaigns. The problem is that not very many are willing to run.

Our political system isn't likely to change to improve this situation, but this research does suggest there might be slate-oriented ways to get more women to run. Here's an example from my neck of the woods. In my hometown of Irvine, for historical reasons, there are basically two slates of candidates that run as a group for city council every couple of years. (I think of them as gangs, but I guess "slate" is a better word.) This system, accidental though it is, seems to attract a fair number of female candidates. People actually vote for councilmembers individually, and usually we end up with some winners from one slate and some from another. Nonetheless, merely running as part of a team seems to encourage more female participation.

That's just my impression, of course, and it might be wrong. But it might be worth another study to see if slate-like behavior, whether formal or informal, increases the number of women who run for political office in the United States.

Via Tyler Cowen.