April 2008

If you register them, they will vote

This past Valentine’s Day, the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee of the Maryland Senate heard testimony on a bill that would set a uniform voter registration age of 16-years-old, offering young people more opportunities to register to vote before reaching voting age. At the hearing, Senators were greeted with valentines from students from Montgomery Blair High School that read, “Don’t break my heart!; Vote for S.B. 92.”

This simple change holds great promise for improving our democracy. The most likely indicator of a young person’s voting behavior is whether he or she is registered to vote. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 80 percent of registered 18 to 24-year-olds actually turned out on Election Day 2004.

A widespread culture of non-participation exists because of the patchwork system for registering voters. Governments in most democracies share the responsibility for ensuring citizens are on the voter rolls, but the United States has a completely self-initiated system. Implementing a uniform registration age will foster greater political awareness, civic responsibility and establish an ethos of involvement in the political process.

Registration and mobilization efforts are often implemented through retail registration, which is often nonexistent during non-presidential election years and in non-battleground like Maryland. In Maryland, some 16-year-olds can register in certain years, and in other years only 17-year-olds can register. This complicated non-uniform system creates inefficiency and discourages potential voters. It also severely limits the success of high school voter registration programs, where teachers and administrators are unsure of how to effectively register their students. Allowing 16-year-olds to register will resolve the inequality of access that currently exists.

Voter turnout for the general public usually hovers in the low fifties in presidential elections. Pundits claim young people are uninterested in and apathetic about the political process, but surveys show this could not be further from the truth. According to a recent Time Magazine survey, 74-percent percent of 18-29-year-olds say they have paid attention to the 2008 presidential race, up from 42-percent in 2004 and 13-percent in 2000. In addition, a Rasmussen survey points out that 49-percent of this group says they are “passionate and deeply committed to a particular Presidential candidate,” nineteen points higher than the general public, which is only at 30-percent.

Current voting behavior is the best indicator of subsequent voting behavior. Put another way, voting is habit-forming. Allowing 16-year-olds to register will reinforce the importance of participation and make it more likely that first-time voters will participate in the first election for which they are eligible.
There are a number of advantages to setting a uniform voter registration age of 16. Sixteen is the final year of compulsorily education in Maryland, which means even those students who do not graduate from high school have an opportunity to register to vote. By allowing 16-year-olds to register, state governments are better prepared to access this group as a bloc in a universal way, through high school civics classes—classes that should also introduce the mechanics of voting and history of suffrage to students.

Another way to encourage a more universal system of voter registration is increasing access at the DMV. Since some teenagers may be more excited about driving than voting, it makes sense to combine these two milestones in a young person’s life. Through the existing “motor voter” structure that is already in place because of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, there would be little, if any, cost associated with implementing this practice.

Today, governments at the state and national level have policies that anticipate nonparticipation. The opt-in, citizen-initiated voter registration regime we have in the United States encourages passive spectators instead of actively engaged participants. Setting a uniform voter registration age of 16 is the first step in showing Americans that the government not only encourages participation, but expects it.
Voter registration at the DMV should move to an opt-out system, as opposed to the current opt-in policy. High schools, universities and community colleges should be mandated by state and federal law to make a “good faith effort” in providing voter registration opportunities for all students.

Every young person, regardless of his or her parent’s voting behavior or where they grow up, should have an equal opportunity to register to vote and learn the mechanics of participation. Until we move to a progressive policy of inclusion, access and accountability, the United States will continue to rank among the bottom in terms of participation in the democratic process.

— Adam Fogel
Takoma Park, MD

Adam Fogel is the Right to Vote Director at FairVote, a nonpartisan voting rights and election reform organization based in Takoma Park, MD.

Stand up for animals

As we stroll through the aisles of a grocery store or sit down to eat at a favorite restaurant, few of us question the safety of the food we’re purchasing. But a recent investigation inside a southern California slaughter plant may forever change the way we think about where our food comes from.

On Sunday, February 17, 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the largest meat recall in our nation’s history: 143 million pounds of beef. This recall stemmed from an undercover video taken inside Hallmark Meat Packing Company, a dairy cow slaughter plant in Chino, California. The video, released a few weeks before the recall was announced, reveals workers torturing crippled cows and violently coercing these sick and injured animals to stand for slaughter. Although there’s a loophole, generally speaking, federal regulations prohibit “downed” cows from entering the human food chain due to the increased risk of spreading disease, including mad cow disease.

It’s likely that much of the recalled meat has already been consumed. Some of it has even been served to schoolchildren—including those attending Montgomery County Public Schools—through the USDA’s National School Lunch Program. As alarming as this record beef recall may be, there’s a bigger concern that begs our attention: our standard food choices.

The traditional American diet, heavy with meat, milk, cheese, and eggs, is dangerously high in artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat. As rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other life-threatening conditions skyrocket in the U.S., many researchers and medical experts are coming to the same conclusion: A vegetarian diet can help protect our health and even reverse some diseases, including the most common one: heart disease. According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians reportedly have lower body mass indices than non-vegetarians as well as lower rates of coronary artery disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and various cancers.

Thankfully, the protein, iron, and calcium our bodies need to stay healthy and strong are all readily available in a large variety of plant-based foods. Try calcium-fortified soy or rice milk on your cereal, heat up protein-packed veggie burger for lunch, or make an iron-rich spinach burrito for dinner.

Choosing vegetarian foods not only helps protect our health, but it also protects animals. Each year in the U.S., more than 10 billion birds, pigs, and cows are killed for is to eat. Most of these animals are forced to spend their lives on factory farms, where they’re crammed inside cages, stalls, or pens, and are deprived of almost everything natural to them. The suffering they endure is incomprehensible—from the moment they’re born until the moment they’re slaughtered, these intelligent and social animals are treated as mere meat-, milk-, and egg-producing machines. With virtually no laws to protect them, farmed animals can be, and routinely are, subjected to practices so cruel, it would lead to prosecution if those same abuses were inflicted upon the dogs and cats with whom we share our homes

Thankfully, each of us can stand up for animals every time we sit down to eat, simply by choosing vegetarian foods. As a growing number of people are opting for healthier and more humane diets, restaurants and grocery stores everywhere, including in Takoma Park and all around the nation’s capital, are catering to the increasing demand for vegetarian fare. Get started today by visiting VegDC.com.

— Erica Meier
Takoma Park, MD

Erica Meier is the executive director of Compassion Over Killing, a Takoma Park-based nonprofit organization focused on exposing cruelty to farmed animals and promoting a vegetarian diet. www.COK.net.

From Alabama to Obama

Clearly the man was outraged. His face was red and he spat when he spoke. His hand, holding the cigar shook spasmodically. “Who do you think you are, walking right alongside a little white girl like that in this town?” he roared. “N_____, you better learn your place!” He jabbed his burning cigar into the chest of the brown-skinned six-year old where it sizzled for a few seconds through cloth and against flesh.

The year was 1965. The place was Ft. McClellan, Alabama. The burned child was me. The “little white girl” was my light-skinned sister.

I am now a 48-year old resident of this nation’s capitol with children of my own who cannot imagine such a society. They cannot fathom their skin color being of any less value than that of their Caucasian counterparts, many of whom are quite vocal about the ugliness of racism that shames some of them today. As an educator, I have shared details of the incident with various classes and groups (black and white) that were studying the negative impact of racial disparity and exclusion, and without exception, each and every individual in the audience appeared visibly shocked—sometimes even angry.

And yet, racism, along with its ugly stepsisters discrimination and bigotry, is still very much alive and well, thank you very much; even here in the nation’s capitol. The only real change between the sixties and now is that the pool of the discriminated has increased exponentially with the inclusion of other ethnic populations that have arrived in this country for the very same purposes as the Pilgrims and their current day ancestors who proudly continue to perpetuate the ugly (not to mention untrue!) notion of racial superiority. The irony is staggering.

So it should come as no surprise that citizens of good conscience prefer Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. It should not be an astounding realization that this one individual, himself a product of the union of Black and White, can envision a truly united state of mind ready (anxious even!) for change. I have always felt rather ambivalently about “the land of the free and the home of the brave” because of its history with me. But now I, too, am hopeful for and eager to see this thing called Change. It would be a first step in the right direction for a lost America.

—Shari Jackson Small
Washington, DC

Is Takoma Park becoming a gated community?

Recently I received a proposal from the City of Takoma Park for “traffic calming” in my neighborhood. One option called for building “bump-outs” in two paces on Glenside Drive and two places on Wildwood. These bump-outs would block one lane of traffic in order to divert traffic from Wildwood to Glenside and back again (west-bound) and from Glenside to Wildwood and back (east-bound). The purpose of this proposal would be to improve traffic on the affected streets by discouraging “cross-through” traffic, i.e., traffic traveling from one side of the neighborhood to the other without stopping.

I have been trying to figure out why I am so opposed to this proposal, and I think I have identified issues unrelated to the specific proposal that should be considered. Specifically, “traffic calming” seems to be part of a trend toward something that has been called the “fortressification” of America, which I see as a form of NIMBY that is inconsistent with the character of Takoma Park.

Diverting traffic cannot solve traffic problems, it can only move them around. The streets we want to block are public streets. If they allow through traffic, it is because they were designed to do so. People who want to live in a gated community, should move to a gated community. Discouraging traffic on side streets increases it on other streets, which will lead to more demands to block off side streets.

If people who live on Wildwood can keep strangers from using their street, why shouldn’t people on Carroll or Flower have the same right? And there are residential areas on Piney Branch, University, Philadelphia, and Ethan Allen. Maybe we should divert all non-local traffic to the Beltway. But then, how would we get to the Beltway?

I have other concerns (the aesthetics of the proposed traffic barriers, the hostility they suggest toward our neighbors, and interference with emergency vehicles) but it is the underlying philosophy that I think we need to question. Does Takoma Park really want to join the gated community bandwagon?

— Sara Kaltenborn
Takoma Park, MD

Our Purple Line vote: What we learned

At our recent General Meeting, the Park Hills Civic Association discussed and voted on key Purple Line issues affecting this east Silver Spring community. With this vote, we learned several things that should be of interest to the Montgomery County and State of Maryland officials who are planning this important East-West transportation link.

First, we learned that these issues are of continuing great interest to our neighbors. The enormous community concern about adverse impacts has not diminished since our September 2007 General Meeting where the PHCA membership overwhelmingly adopted a Resolution requesting that the Maryland Transit Administration prepare detailed studies of “underground” options as well as traffic and congestion studies, so we can better understand the costs and benefits of the Purple Line for our neighborhood.

Second, and importantly, we learned that, while there is great support among our neighbors for mass transit generally, most of the people attending our meeting preferred either further improvements to the “existing” bus system and traffic modernization or “no new transit.” Third, we learned, from our open discussion, that a majority of our neighbors are not yet convinced of the benefits that a new Purple Line transit system might bring to the Park Hills community which would be directly affected by either of the proposed alignments on Wayne Avenue or between Silver Spring and Thayer Avenues. We also learned that there is overwhelming support among our PHCA members for an “underground” option if the State of Maryland selected Wayne Avenue as its preferred alternative.

It is clear that our neighbors need more information from the Maryland Transit Administration about local impact, particularly with regard to possible changes to the critical intersection of Wayne Avenue and Dale Drive, and the impact on Sligo Creek Elementary School and the Silver Spring International Middle School. Our neighbors are concerned about pedestrian safety, an increase in congestion and cut-through traffic, and possible changes in zoning density near suggested Purple Line stations.

The concerns that this community has about the Purple Line are broadly shared with the adjoining Seven Oaks-Evanswood neighborhood whose civic association voted on these issues on the same date. So there exists a strong consensus of our neighbors between Piney Branch Road and Colesville Road that the Purple Line, and particularly a Wayne Avenue alignment at street level, would have a broad range of adverse impacts for these neighborhoods.

From our vote, it is apparent that the MTA has not yet made a compelling case for a new light rail transit system that would cut through and divide our neighborhoods.

As many neighbors noted at our civic association meeting, the impacts of the Purple Line are obvious, but the benefits are not clear. Our community’s vote was not the end of the process, but a good start in assessing where we stand. We ask our elected officials to take note.

— Alan S. Bowser
Silver Spring, MD

The writer is President of the Park Hills Civic Association

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