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October 17, 2004

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Andrea

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Ace Parsi

I'm writing this as a voice of dissent and I hope that having the views you do, you will include this voice and if you choose try to convice me to come to your side. I believe that Nader supporters need to unite with Independents, Greens, and Democrats to defeat George Bush, and so I also believe that Ralph Nader (whom I have the deepest respect for) should drop out. Before I go any further I will mention that I am not your average Democrat, but am in line with your views on so many issues. I am a senior at Penn State University where I was one of the leaders of the anti-war movement at my school, a fighter for diversity in student government, the founder of a domestic poverty awareness group, and a member of my school's Global AIDS Initiative working to get further aide and generics to AIDS ridden countries in Africa. I'm also an immigrant from Iran who came to this country in utter poverty and have thus fought for immigrant rights and rights of the poor for a long period and am as progressive as they come. At the same time, during these last four years I've seen poverty numbers the last four years sky rocket, I've seen an administration that has appealed to people's worst fears and in so doing brought citizens hate upon Middle Easterners, and held back two thirds of the AIDS relief funding it had promised to the third world. My Pell Grants have gotten cut the last four years, which have made the lives of my family and tons of middle class families across the country trying to pay for college miserable. Who knows... the country of my birth, Iran, could be the next one attacked.

Do I agree with everything the Democratic party stands for? Absolutely not! But I'm not going to pretend that the consequences of having another four years of Bush aren't real, nor will I concede that the differences in the positions of Kerry and Bush are too abstract. The differences are real, the consequences are real, and the pain myself, my family, underpriveleged people across the country, and yes even you yourself have felt over the last four years are very real. Right now the Republicans have all three branches of government. That is both democratically not sound and indeed very frightening. For that reason, I will vote for John Kerry and ask Ralph Nader (who again I admire very much) to drop out. I will work once Kerry is in office to affect the change Ralph talks about on issues I also feel are important but are not being addressed once he is in office and I will force Democrats to take those positions. However, I will not be selfish in working for an abstract principle when so many people have needlessly been added to the poverty total, our environmental legislation has been treaded upon, and so many other issues that Bush has supported have taken us in the wrong direction.
Let's unite right now before it's too late. Bush's right wing republicans really are trying to divide us and helping to get Ralph on the ballot in only battleground states. In the words of former asshole conservative Republican Majority Leader, Dick Armey whose organization got signatures for Ralph in Oregon,"liberals are tying to unite but we could divide this base of support by signing up for Nader." This Republican help is happening in every state and it's documented on this site that I found http://www.thenaderfactor.com/press/072304/. Let's not let them fool us. Let's not let them divide us. In these last two weeks let's unite, take back our country, and kick Bush back to Crawford!

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