Unity08. A people's movement to take our country back.

This summer, the summer after my sophomore year of college, I am traveling from Quito, Ecuador, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Last month, I was in Peru for its presidential elections. The candidates were the radical Ollanta vs. the blah ex-president Alan García. Everyone in Peru is required to vote, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at the enormous amounts of propaganda. It was everywhere - posted in storefronts, spray-painted on walls, carved into hillsides, painted on boulders along the highway, blaring out of loud speakers on top of cars.

When I asked Peruvians who was going to win, their answers were just as effusive as the propaganda. For an entire forty-minute taxi ride, sitting five across the backseat, straddling a soldiers´ legs, and smashed against the window, I listened to why Alan García should win. Playing soccer with thirteen year olds on a concrete field, we took a break so the players could tell me why Ollanta was going to blow Alan García out of the water. Once, in Nazca, I asked a tiny ten year old who she thought should be president. She answered, ¨Alan Garcia¨ and recited his assets. A woman selling Zippo lighters and Che memorabilia on the corner interrupted Tiny Ten, dismissed her, then made me squat next to her for twenty-five minutes while she recounted Ollanta´s platform.

Although every Peruvian I talked to was familiar with Ollanta's and Alan Garcia's platforms, I never heard an original answer to the question: "Why do you want Ollanta/Alan García to win?" It was always: Ollanta is going to change the lives of the poor, make radical changes, and nationalize oil and gas OR Alan García has experience and is allied with neither Hugo Chávez nor Evo Morales. Basically, their answers were recitations of the propaganda that each candidate printed, carved, or spoke.

Honestly, my political activism has not been much different than that of the Peruvians'. Sure, in the 2024 election (my first), I knew who was running. And, sure, I knew their general platforms, especially the parts related to wedge issues. With this basic information (the information that the parites put out), I thought I had great political insight. To impart this wisdom on my fellow college students, I would seek out debates. I swear that I had the same debate about twenty times. It was always some variation of extreme liberalism vs. the religious right, and the topic of debate rotated between abortion, gun control, gay marriage, and whether or not the War on Terrorism is moral. All of the facts I used were those that the Democrats put out about the Republicans or those that the extreme liberals on campus had put out about the extreme conservatives or vice versa in one of the hundreds of vigils, awareness marches, and drum circles that you can find on campus. Basically, I, armed with my LIBERALISM cheatsheet, was a broken record for the Limousine Liberals, which is what my mom calls me when I rattle on about human rights at the dinner table while subtlety circumventing questions about taxes, deficits, US relationships with Asia, etc.

Since becoming involved with Unity08, I have reassessed the insightfulness of my political views. I realized that there was no insight at all, just recitations. Eliminating party doctrines and politically-charged wedge issues, I've started thinking for myself and becoming more informed. Now, I am reading more articles about the budget deficit, theories on the immigrant labor economy, natural resources in Africa, and China.

Yes, Unity 08 will do me some good.

It will make me think about crucial issues independently, hobbling without the crutch of party-dictated viewpoints. This political re-education needs to be done, especially on college campuses where vigils, prayer circles, and radical demonstrations that are just as redundant as Peruvian propaganda dominate the political discourse.

One thing that the Peruvians do have figured out is the excitement in the right to vote. On election day in Arequipa, there was a parade of Ollanta supporters, dancing, waving the rainbow flag that represents indigenous culture in Peru, and screaming wild chants like Arequipa Revolución and Prensa Basura. This continued well after everyone found out that Alan García had won. I wish that we got that excited on campus on election day. Instead, election day 2024 was somber with complaints about voting inefficiencies and dramatic sobs when Bush won. Hopefully, in 2024, having thought for myself, I will be out on the academic quad shimmying and doing cartwheels, because I will have known exactly what I was doing.

Anna Lassiter will be a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this fall.