Jay, 38, Washington, DC - Non-Profit Coordinator for the Washington Peace Center

Are you proud to be an American?

Hell yeah, well I don’t know, I used to… I’m proud to be a human being. If America really represented the ideals that are upheld supposedly in this constitution then of course I’d be proud. One of the best things Bill Clinton ever said was in his second inaugural address when he said America’s not a place its an idea. Its an ideal and it’s a beautiful ideal. Freedom and justice and liberty is something that has inspired the world and will always inspire us. But I’m not really proud to be an American right now. Obviously it’s a shame to be an American right now because we are using this beautiful democracy and all our privilege and all our power and we’re using it to throw our weight around in the world and it’s actually criminal what we are doing. We could do so much better by ourselves and by the planet, we could be setting an example for a sustainable energy future. Imagine if we put 600 billion dollars a year into sustainable energy, renewable fuel right? Solar and wind instead of bullets and bombs and tanks and aircraft carriers. I mean, its madness, we should be so much more secure, we’re acting like an insecure bully. We’re the biggest, strongest economy and country in the world and we should be proud of that and we should not be afraid, cowering. We don’t have anything to be afraid of except ourselves and letting our own government trample our rights.

What are your hopes for the future?

To write and do theater and make music and I hope to get married, have a family and raise them in a positive and sustainable way. And raise them free and not afraid of their government. Not afraid their government’s gonna invade another country on some pretense. And make them not afraid to, for instance, serve in the military. Right now I could not encourage anybody to serve in the military, but that’s tragic. My grandfather served in the military. My grandfather died in world war II. We need to reclaim the integrity of our country.

Annie, 25, Denver, CO - Student

What do you think foreign countries think of America and do you care?

Yeah I definitely care. I think we have enough economic power that we should be setting a better example than we do and we kind of… like things like the Kyoto treaty or we have these agreements with countries that we’re gonna do things better and we’re gonna behave properly and we just kind of tend to ignore all those things. Like we’re one of the only countries that didn’t sign the Kyoto treaties. We don’t follow any of the UN resolutions. How can we expect anybody else to behave if we’re not going to?

What are your hopes for America’s future?

I hope that things like health care and housing and food will be more available to everyone who needs them, you know… we definitely have enough that everyone should have a house and should have food and should have health care and that’s just not how it is. So that’s what I’d hope for the country.