Virginia Choi, one of the bloggers for
stampstampede.org, sent me an email and asked me some questions of how did I get involved in the movement to reduce big money in politics.
I gave her this lengthy response (I slightly edited it for this post):
You want to know how did I get interested in the movement? Very long story. It's all starts with my love-hate relation with The Young Turks to the last year's McCutcheon vs FEC case.
I think like a year ago, back in my high school junior/senior year, I used to subscribe and watch The Young Turks youtube channel. But the tone of their progressive messaging was so negative and cynical in a cringe-worthy way I decided to unsubscribe it.
Back then, I was a part of school newspaper group, so politic and journalism was dominant discussion topic at that time. At the journalism room, while we were working on the latest issue of the paper, I came across this kid who watches The Young Turks regularly, and I told him how I don't like The Young Turks anymore.
One day, we walked together in the middle of the night and discussed about politic. He mentioned how the billionaires funds political candidate's campaign and how someone like Mitt Romney won the Republican primary against someone more reasonable and honest like Ron Paul. He also said that's the part of reasons why
Wolf-PAC, a campaign finance reform group founded by The Young Turks creator Cenk Uygur, exist and how he's part of the movement to get money out of politic.
So after we had this conversation, I learned there's a legalized bribery within our political system. I played around with the idea of trying to make awareness to this issue. I remember last spring, during the afternoon meeting, where I talk with my editor about which story, event, or topic I am going to cover for the month. I told her that I am going to write an editorial about money in politic and trying to encourage readers to join Wolf-PAC and their causes.
Right after I finished talking with her, the kid who told me about this issue came to me and said, "So you want to write about Wolf-PAC?", and showed me the article that the Supreme Court struck down another campaign finance restriction and declare that there will be no restriction whatsoever. This ruling happens to be,
McCutcheon v. FEC. While I was working on this
editorial [you can read it by clicking the link], I thought, "Oh my God. Democracy in America is dead."
From there on, I read many news articles, commentaries, and books about dark money in politic. And, for entire year, I slowly connecting the dots of financial-related events in the past (like the Occupy Wall Street and 2013 government shutdown) and finally came close to an answer of why we have this unresponsive government.
I used to think United States as the great example of successful democracy, but now we no longer have this successful democracy anymore. We are living in a state where big corporations take over everything and the government that doesn't represent the citizens.
And that's how I became the most vocal supporter of campaign finance reform. Even though there are more things I want you to tell, but I think that's enough for today. I may not be a US citizen (I am from South Korea), but I will fight for this country and their values no matter what.
(.....)
She asked me if I could write a brief testimony on why Stamping is important for me or if I've had any interesting conversations/encounters related to the Stampede.
I haven't send her a response to that question yet, but I will say this:
Whenever I have a dollar bill, I always stamp on it and spend it at convenient store or coffee shop, so more people within Columbia can get my dollar bills as changes. Also, whenever I encountered a homeless person on the street, I gave him some stamped dollars to buy more stuffs at small store nearby.
That's only way to get the message across: we use banknotes, or money, this property that kept the broken system of the society running, to spread the awareness of that broken system within the public and encourage citizens to fix the system. Tell them to join the Stampede or Wolf-PAC for that matters. These crony capitalists are buying our representatives every elections and come to screw your life. Do something, for Christ's sake!
I still haven't met anyone who is part of the Stampede, but I know there are few people living in my area who has the Stamp Stampede stamp. How do I know? The front page of the website has this map that shows how many people purchased and where the purchasers live (but not in much specific details).
In fact, I want to meet these people. I want to talk with them about how we could make people come together, despite political barriers, and demand more for campaign finance reform.
For more than a year, I encourage people that I know of and talked with to sign Wolf-PAC's petition and join their causes. I handed out flyers to people who are either progressive or politically active and lobbied candidates to make them introduce a resolution to call for Article V Convention (only if they elected to the office).
To me, I feel like Stamp Stampede could give the public an attention to the important issue that mass media rarely talk about. People uses bills to give a tip to employees and buy items from small store. It could reach to other people from far away and make them notice the issue.
So that's my statement on this, and it went longer than I thought.
I am thinking about buying another stamp that has stronger message. It needs more impact to make people care about the issue, rather than just telling them to join Wolf-PAC.
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