The right to petition is one of the greatest tools we have in the United States of America. It helps bring awareness, change and gives big businesses the power to hire “volunteers” to get signatures for them.
Ever since our founding fathers drafted the First Amendment, the common man and woman were given the ability to make their voices heard through the power of petition.
Petitioning has helped us bring change to our society by confronting the government, both federal and local. From preserving landmarks to bringing a new law onto Congress, petitioning is a great asset.
Until some corporation comes along and tries to rally “volunteers” through the use of money.
The middle and lower class shouldn’t have to pretend to care to petition something they obviously are against, they should focus on addressing the issues they actually are concerned about both politically and emotionally.
Petitioning should symbolize your political and emotional feelings for a cause, not just for you to make a quick buck. Otherwise, it will defeat the purpose of having such a tool.
When people get offered money to find people to sign pages and pages or proposals, they start to not give a crap about the issues and the problems attached to it. They are only in it for the money.
Additionally, they might not even be given the right information of whats really hidden behind those stacks of paper, increasing the chances of something malicious or unapproved to get “accidentally signed”.
Picture this.
You are walking across campus with your backpack on and your eyes looking through the hottest topic on social media on your phone while you’re enjoying that sweet playlist you spent hours creating for a microsession of chill time. Everything seems sweet and cheery.
Then, you feel the tap on your shoulder.
You look over, a little annoyed that someone threw off your A-game, and getting prepared to give them the cold “Can I help you,” only to find someone with a clipboard. Not just someone, a friendly petitioner. They then say the seven words that basically flip your world.
“Can you sign this for the cause?”
Now you have two options: be a dick to said cause and say no, feeling guilty that you probably killed something that benefits society, or to be the “nice” individual and agree to sign.
Once you sign your name away in the list full of people who were in the same situation before you, they flip onto the next page and then the next page.
Trying to sign quickly because you have a class coming soon, all the pages begin to blur, not realizing you just signed seven petitions with at least half of them going against your beliefs and political standpoint.
For all you know, you could’ve signed a petition for California to become its own country.
We can’t always read between the lines as they try to nonchalantly slip you a petition for cutting minimum wage or legalizing some wahoo crime.
We need to say no to the big companies that want to pay us for doing the dirty work for them. If we want to petition, it should be because we care about the issues.
Otherwise, you might get tricked to sign a petition for higher college tuition.
