Greetings from Gainesville, FL!

[heisenberg]

My name is Mike and I'm currently a student working on my B.S. in Health Education and Behavior. I consider myself to be a pretty radical leftist, but have yet to get myself involved in the community. I've discovered it's pretty difficult being this way when everyone else in your life isn't, so I figured this might be a good place for me to connect and talk with like-minded people who don't constantly get annoyed with my beliefs/think I'm some sort of lunatic :glare:

[Q]

Welcome :)

If you have political questions, you can ask them in the Learning forum. That's why it's there after all!

If you have questions about your account, don't hesitate to send me a PM or ask here.

What are your political ideas, if anything in specific? Also, is there a leftist community in your area?

[Loony Le Fist]

Welcome bud. I'm also closeby in North Florida. :thumbup1:

[Sinister Intents]

Welcome to RevLeft :) I'm far to your north!

[Ele'ill]

Hi, I'm far to your Northwest

[Comrade Jacob]

I think there will be a lot of people who will think you're crazy on this site no matter what your belief are.
But welcome.

[heisenberg]

What are your political ideas, if anything in specific? Also, is there a leftist community in your area?

Well Gainesville is a spot of blue in a sea of red in north central Florida, but I wouldn't call the town leftist by any stretch of the imagination. Its left-leaning reputation is mostly because literally half the town is populated by college students who vote heavily Democrat but don't actually have the faintest idea about economics or politics, or really anything beyond what happened at last night's frat party. There is definitely a small but solid core of actual radicals and leftists in town, but I've only had limited interactions with them, and the impression I've got is that a lot of them seem to be pretentious hipsters rather than actual leftists trying to change anything.

As for my political ideas, I suppose my overarching political ideology is heavily environmentally-based and I believe that human beings need to be more respectful to the planet and all living things. I think that corporations should never be allowed to patent genes or seeds, and that GMO's, hormones, and antibiotics need to all be removed from our food supply. All hunting for sport should be illegal, and all animals being raised for food need to be treated humanely (i.e. free range needs to actually mean free range, not just a big muddy outdoor pen with 10,000 chickens crammed into it). I also believe that we as a society need to greatly reduce our meat consumption, both for individual health and environmental reasons. Fracking is without question a dangerous practice putting the health of millions of Americans at risk and should be halted immediately, and all of our energy investments need to go toward renewable sources. Human overpopulation is another issue, and I am of the belief that the ideal human population size is somewhere in the 500 million to 1 billion range. I think that no matter what, the planet must always be put ahead of profit. Besides the environment, I am also greatly concerned with workers' rights issues and am a strong supporter of cooperative and democratic workplaces (Mondragon in Basque Country proved it can be done on a large scale, though admittedly it is imperfect and could still use a few tweaks). While I know it is only a short-term solution that does not address the larger structural issues, I am nonetheless in favor of the federal minimum wage being raised to at least $10.10/hr, while also being tied to inflation. I believe corporate welfare needs to be completely abolished, and in the meantime the same rules that conservatives want to apply to individual welfare recipients should be applied to corporations (that includes drug-testing for CEO's). Lastly, I believe in total legalization of all drugs (though not until all of the CEO's are drug-tested and lose their jobs, of course ;)). Drug abuse is a health problem, not a criminal one, and all of our resources in the "War on Drugs" need to be spent on treatment programs for those looking to get clean, instead of locking them up and calling it a victory. Related to this, I think that the entire for-profit prison industry needs to be completely dismantled. It is shameful and embarrassing that the so-called "land of the free" has the highest incarceration rate in the world. I think that about covers it, though I'm sure I've forgotten something.

[heisenberg]

Aaaand I just realized what I forgot: universal healthcare and education. The ACA is a joke and nothing but a gift to the insurance companies. What we need is complete and total universal healthcare, with a heavy focus on prevention instead of treatment. Prevention costs are typically a mere fraction of treatment costs, and literally hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and deaths could be avoided every single year if our healthcare system was focused on prevention. As for education, if we took all the money we spent waging war, we could provide tuition-free education to anyone with an interest and ability to get a college degree. The fact that millions of Americans fresh out of college are being saddled with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in debt is borderline criminal. We tell kids these days they need a college degree to get a job, then they get that degree, can't find a job that pays more than minimum wage, and then get treated like criminals when they can't find a way to pay back $100,000 in student loan debt.