Think Youth Welcomes James Ivker!

Hello All,

My name is James Ivker and I am a 17 year old Senior from Wayland, Massachusetts. I have only recently become interested in the crazy world of politics. Last fall I joined a program called Youth and Government in which high schoolers run a mock government in the State of Massachusetts which culminates in a three day conference at the Massachusetts State House while students try to pass legislation. Through this program I have realized the beauty of the political system. I consider myself to be liberal but am open to ideas from any part of the political spectrum. I believe that we as a country should do whatever we need to ensure that our country can reach its peak in greatness. Thus said, I find that the majority of ideas presented to improve our country in my view come from the Democratic Party which is why I associate with them. However, after spending a week this summer in North Carolina at the Youth Conference on National Affairs I have seen that we are all Americans with the ability to compromise in order to better ourselves and our fellow countrymen. I sat with 600 high schoolers whose goal was to pass “proposals” that would improve America. It didn’t matter if you were a tree hugging liberal or a bible clutching conservative or somewhere in between, we were all Americans.

As Barrack Obama said in his address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, “The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”