Liberals: Left of Center/Expert Profile

Expertise

News, media, and documentary junkie addicted to and empassioned by political thought, writing, discussion and debate. Activist involved at local and national levels in issues concerning social justice.

Experience in the area

Though as a younger woman most of what I did, politically, involved demonstrating and organizing demonstrations against war, nuclear power, or on behalf of Tibetans, or a Mexican neighborhood whose week-end and evening public transportation has been cut, I've grown increasingly and more seriously interested in politics with age, to the point that politics of all kinds are a passion for me. I've done a good deal of reading and research on my own, and while not having actually worked in the field of politics, the subject has always cropped up in classes I've taken - like Design History - or in work I've done - teaching English to people from all over the world. The last book that changed my entire perspective on American history, and politics, is "A Peoples' History of the United States," by Howard Zinn, a leftist historian whose groundbreaking work has even made it into American schools as textbooks for many levels in the past ten years. Other work that has edified and inspired me are books written by Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf, Noam Chomski, "The Pinky Show" video series on Youtube, and more recently, three documentaries: "The Power of Nightmares," "The Century of the Self," and "Food Inc." I've also been lucky to have always had a variety of people, often as an organized group, to discuss and debate political issues with.

Organizations

Active in the Free University movement, with Peer to Peer University and others, and a member of Creative Commons.

Education/Credentials

My education in politics comes primarily from activism and all kinds of reading as a teenager during the Vietnam war up to the present day, through a handful of undergraduate history and and graduate sociology classes, and more recently from experience as an admin in a political chatroom for a year and a half and having my own political room for a shorter time. The last experience was a tremendous learning opportunity to not only be among every sort of political animal from retired union worker to right-wing survivalist alike, but to also see a spectrum of many points of grey that go unnoticed due to the polarity that devides so many Americans today. For the past three years, I've been a participant of a political discussion group that functions like a Yahoo Group, sharing email during the week of particularly interesting news or experience, and meeting for two-hour Skype group conferencing one night a week.

What do you like about this subject?

These are the "interesting times" the Chinese curse refers to. I'm interested in learning what people from all parts of the world and all walks of life are thinking and doing, and have to say or discuss about what we are living through in the present time.

What do you still hope to achieve/learn in this field?

Like many Americans after the "economic collapse" of 2007-2008, I've had to start at the very beginning where it comes to understanding how even one country's economy works, or was supposed to, in theory, let alone the world's economy and what the problems of globalism are.

Something interesting about this subject that others may not know:

President Barack Obama is not a "liberal," and nowhere even near the "left of center" as so many of us may have believed before he was elected. Our President is, in fact, a neo-liberal, as Bill Clinton was. A centrist. : Senator Bernie Sanders: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq1zpHF0J04

Something controversial or provocative about this subject

I find the challenges we are facing today extraordinary, especially when considered as they are, all happening in together: climate change and the many known and unknowable problems it is bringing to our environment, peak oil, food and water shortages, economic collapse, crumbling society and infrastructure, the fast-growing disparity between the rich and the poor.