Survival Of The Fittest

Everyone seemed to really be getting into the discussion about Iraq, in particular the motives for invasion. Harun rested his head on the table, listening intently to everyone's arguments, trying to come up with a way to state his own. He chuckled at a few of the more entertaining points and nodded slightly at some of the points he really agreed with, but was mostly silent.

As Rashid sat down, Harun glanced around the room to make sure no-one was about to speak, and then sat up in his chair and began to talk, at a surprisingly fast speed for Harun. "The thing is, I bet that some of the people who supported the war did think they were disposing of a terrorist-friendly regime that supported Al-Qaeda, and that Saddam was on the verge of getting WMDs and killing everyone. They were probably a bit deluded, but still. The problem was, most of them were in it, at least in part, for oil and money and stuff, and they didn't give, erm, making democracy or rebuilding Iraq a second thought. All the rebuilding contracts were given to companies owned by Cheney and whatever, the Ministry of Oil was protected by US soldiers while everywhere else was left to rot, and if it was about disposing of an evil dictatorship, why don't they attack..." he stared at the ceiling, tapping his fingers to try and think of a good example "Zimbabwe? Or whatever? I mean, I'm not saying they should, that'd be wrong, but oil obviously had a part to play."

He then remembered a story he heard in the media while he had been on a holiday in the UK a short while back. He didn't know much about it, but he thought his fellow activist group members would want to hear it. "Apparently, in the UK, they had this intelligence dossier thing before the war to try and justify their involvement. It said that Saddam was able to use chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of sending an order. This weapons inspector guy, forgot his name, basically told the press that he felt the government put in that 45 minutes bit so they could justify going to war, even though he thought it was dubious and not that likely, and he told the press anonymously about his concerns. Then the government found out he'd done it and made his life hell, and he was found dead in the woods a few days later. And they said it was a suicide." He paused briefly, biting his lower lip. Harun felt he'd probably been rambling about something irrelevant or pointless, or he'd got details of the incident wrong, but, still, he'd said it all now. "So, yeah, they may have just lied about the whole WMD thing, so it obviously weren't the real reason."

Shifting in his chair to get back into a comfortable position, Harun paused. "Oh, and I'm Harun, by the way. Yeah." He then put his head back onto the table.

Dutchy rubbed his hands together in anticipation, the meeting seemed to be progressing without a hitch.

All according to plan… muhuhaha-yay!

Besides Sarah, Rashid, Harun and Madelyn there was another boy who had decided to pass on speaking, depriving Dutchy of the chance to put a name to the face. As they went around the room to Dutchy's surprise Roland Hayes entered the room and took a seat near him. He smiled and gave him a wave despite the fact they were pretty close to each other and a simple and quiet "hello" would have sufficed. Dutchy had found himself sitting next to Roland in the café on numerous occasions and when the other boy was up for it, the topic had often centered on comics. While they didn't exactly share the same tastes in comics, Dutchy respected the boy as a fellow comic connoisseur.

As the conversation moved about the table, Dutchy mostly found himself nodding his head in agreement. When Rashid stood and spoke, most of it flew over straight over his head. He stroked his chin and cocked his eyebrow trying his best to decipher exactly what the other boy meant. He'd have to Google ‘House of Saud' and figure out who Chavez was if he hoped to keep up with them at the next meeting.

Suddenly Harun next to him stood and began talking; Dutchy looked over at his friend paying careful attention to what he said.

Wait, isn't Chavez that Dictator in Venezuela? Yes? Maybe? No?

Harun was continuing, telling a rather disgusting story about a former government employee found dead in the woods. Dutchy felt his stomach turn and he let out a disgusted groan. Dutchy looked at his friend as he sat back down in his seat.

"That's terrible!" He exclaimed.

Dutchy looked across the room and felt his face growing red.

That was… really not that mature sounding...

He cleared his throat and laughed at his own stupidity. "Uh…Okay, well, yes. What I meant to say is, it's terrible but it happens all the time." He paused. "I mean, the tactics they used, not the like, the murder. Or maybe that too." Dutchy scratched his head and laughed. "Okay, I guess all I was trying say was that it's bad to murder people for oil. Or just murder people in general, or for something like politics. Or just like, yeah, in general."

Silence.

"When people die, it's bad." He said simply. He looked around at the others.

Dutchy was beginning to think he was a little out of his element when it came to the political aspect of the conversation. It wasn't that he was stupid… just that he had no idea what to say. He began to think that he should have at least glanced at a Wikipedia article about the Middle East before arriving. He blamed Stan Lee. He thought back to last Christmas. His Mother had bought him a book of Buddhist teachings. It had proven to be an interesting read. Perhaps it could be equally helpful here? The gears in his head churning, Dutchy lept up out of his chair.

"Umm... okay well look, I don't know what to say about the politics. As you can see rather plainly, I'm not gonna' try to hide that. We can't change the fact that there is war in the Middle East or help stop innocent people from dying. But we CAN show people the truth and maybe change a few peoples' minds over here. Buddha said ‘We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.' Well what's to say our thoughts can't help shape the Middle Easy into a more peaceful place? So let's focus on the future rather then the past, shall we? I think we're all in agreement that the war in the Middle East is near unjustifiable. But what can we, the students of Bayview Secondary, do about it? Oh! Idea! Can anyone think of something that could potentially help lessen the tensions in the Middle East? Some kind of solution…, a proposal, anything that could help?"

He sat back down and poked Harun in the side.

"I think when I stand up, I get smarter. Isn't that weird?" he whispered to his friend.

A whirlpool of information was sucking its way around the room, everyone involved getting their mind over the matter and posting well valued thoughts into all this stuff: Iraq and stuff. The main reason he joined this group on a whim was to get information, and that's all. He didn't have anything valueable to contribute to the group...except a slight amount of pessimism.

As soon as Dutchy stopped, he realised he should speak. Meekly getting up, he cleared his throat, and tried to ignore the fact that all eyes in the room were on him.

"Hey, umm, I'm Brendan, and umm....Okay, so I didn't really come here expecting to put that much of a view forward and stuff, and I don't really know much about Iraq apart from some stuff that vaguely sits back in my old schoolbooks, but...look, I'm Australian, and I don't know much about American propoganda and war policies and whatever, but what I do know is that, and I'm prolly gonna sound really pessimistic about what we, I mean...yeah, sorry, we, aim to do I suppose, but, I don't really see how we can do anything. We can talk about it, we can suggest ideas, but come on, this isn't some fancy private school where the kids of the President or some senator go to school. This is Minnesota. Do we have any TV stations that we can lump our ideas onto?"

Brendan paused to take in some breath, before he continued.

"I suppose you can correct me if I'm wrong, but all the environmental group at my old school did was put up some recycling bins in the rooms, and even they disappeared over time. The school administrators, or whoever actually runs the school, do they have any influence on America's law? I suppose what I'm trying to get at, since I lost my train of thought a while ago, is that....look, can we use this time to try and put some proposals forward that MIGHT, only MIGHT, get some attention and influence America in the future, or can we do something else?"

"How about raising awareness about all this stuff? I know you Americans, and your pre-disposition to protest against this conflict in the Middle East, but...there are HEAPS of more important things going on in the world that barely graze the news that we could be talking about; We all know everything there is to know about Iraq, how we're only there to institute American policy, and all that jazz. But....okay, so if I seem to be repeating stuff that everyone already knows, since everyone here is pretty obviously well versed in what's going on in the world, but it's just because I'm new, I swear. People at my school were under the impression that Australia was ruled by a President, and couldn't even find England on a map. But it's only since I....sorry, lost my train of thought again. So what I tried to say under all that is, that....okay, I lost that as well, but what Dutchy said is a good idea. It's only an idea though. Like I said, we're only a small group. Do we know anyone who can actually push any ideas we might come up with into the higher-ups? Does the Minnesota Senator, or someone with influence in Washington or something live around here? If so would they mind being bugged by a group of high-school students?"

Brendan paused for a moment again, trying to think of what to say next, when he added something else.

"Like I said, sorry if I'm just relaying info that all of you already know, or getting heaps of obvious stuff wrong, but I'm new here, and have zilch of an idea how anything works. So....thanks."

Brendan sat down, his ears red, his legs feeling like jelly. He hadn't spoken so much since he ranted online earlier that week about how much America sucked compared to the rest of the world, and even that wasn't speaking. His chest felt tight, and he wished he had eaten lunch that day. No time for regrets, though. Time to see the impact of that infobomb he just unloaded.

Madelyn's question had a bigger impact on the discussion than she had intended. Everyone had their own theories as to why the war had started, and the question even prompted a fellow latecomer to enter the group as well.

Roland was quick to introduce himself and introduce his theory of the American friendly regime as the reason for the war, which Madelyn initially agreed with. However, Madelyn was quickly stunned by Sarah's counterpoint of Oligarchical payouts and civil rights setbacks. As far as conspiracies went, Sarah's probably had the most logical basis. Why bother building an ally and stealing their oil when you and your friends could get rich of of the American people and keep them from fighting back?

Having found a theory that she wanted to hear more of, Madelyn restrained herself from blurting out more questions as she waited for a chance to turn the conversation back towards Sarah's theories. Rashid had gone back to oil theories and brought up a good point about world economics in regards to the oil, and Harun shared a very hard hitting story about the British government's involvement in the deception that lead to them entering the war that she mostly missed due to her attention drifting off to more theories about Haliburton and Dick Cheney's profiteering. However, Dutchy's "That's terrible!" outburst completely derailed her train of thought.

Wait what? What's terrible? Madelyn thought to herself as she quickly looked around the room for the source of the terribleness. Dutchy's face was turning a distinct shade of pink, but he soon laughed it off and sort of explained that it was 'murder for oil' or something like that.

Ummm... I think I missed something. she decided, embarrassed at having not paid attention to Harun. She'd have to ask Dutchy was was so terrible later. Dutchy recovered from his 'killing is bad' stuttering (though Madelyn had to admit he was kinda cute when he was flustered) and mentioned that the group should probably focus on a possible solution. What happened next completely caught Madelyn by surprise: The boy in the back stood up and began to speak adamantly about taking action.

Brendan may have been a pessimist, but his infobomb did bring up a great point; what was the point of talking about Iraq at school if there was nothing that they could really do about it? Sure, awareness was all well and good, but awareness without action meant that nothing would ever change. Brendan proposed a call to action to the group, which got Madelyn thinking. Maybe they COULD do something to help. Noticing the silence that filled the air after Brendan's impressive addition to the discussion, Madelyn decided to put forth an idea to the rest of the group.

"Umm... so... wow." Madelyn said as she stood up, still somewhat awestruck by Brendan's speech. "I don't really know what we could do to really take on the whole Iraq war by ourselves. I mean look at us, we're just a bunch of high schoolers." Madelyn's hands shook nervously as she paused to collect her thoughts, hoping that she hadn't given the group the wrong impression with her statement.

"What I mean is, we might not be able to end the war, but we could probably do something more than just 'raise awareness' around the school. Like Brendan mentioned; most high school groups like his environmental club usually just settle for the bare minimum of awareness. I think that we could do better than that. We may not be able to go straight to our senator and be like 'we want you to stop the war now' but we could possibly do something to catch his attention. We could focus on something small that we could take out of the equation of the war, like possibly organizing a 'bring our troops home' rally, or bringing people's attentions towards the atrocities of the Patriot Act. Something small like that could eventually snowball into a big change for our entire country." She said, wringing her hands as she ran out of ideas.

"Would something like that work you guys?" she asked the group before taking her seat again, her hands still shaking nervously in her lap as she waited to see if anyone agreed with her idea.

Sigh, what am I doing here? Oh yes, now I remember... damn...

Personally, Vera Osborne didn't particularly feel like going to a debating club at that moment in time. She'd just finished yet another art project for Mr Corwin, and quite frankly wanted nothing more than to lay back and have a nice rest. Not that the idea of a thrilling political debate didn't spark her interest or anything, its just that all she wanted was a bit of peace and quiet so she could relax after working so damn hard all day.

Sadly, of course, she also remembered the fact that her father just so happened to invite his gun nut buddies over for a barbecue that evening... And Vera knew from experience that whenever they were around, peace and quiet was all but impossible.

So she decided to come along anyway. Maybe not actually say or do much, but at least she won't be surrounded by gun toting rednecks celebrating the 2nd Amendment.

By the time she arrived, things were already looking quite busy. She could recognize Madelyn Prowers' voice on the other side of the door, although she couldn't quite tell what she was talking about. Something about some war? The war in Iraq, maybe? Well, she'd find out soon enough. She waited for Madelyn to finish speaking before knocking and entering.

"Hello, sorry i'm late. Had to finish off this painting for Mr Corwin... Um, I'm not too late to join, am I?"

Roland's weak argument was immediately demolished by three debaters in a row, arguing about incompetence and malevolence and outright vile behavior and so on and so on. He sighed and nodded, looking up to each of them as they made their points, which he could probably find somewhere on Huffington Post or Daily Kos if he looked hard enough. Not that it was necessarily wrong.

"Yeah. You're probably right. Dunno why I bothered playing devil's advocate at all." These were, after all, the cross-eyed chucklefucks who somehow managed to lose over four hundred teenage citizens to a terrible fate. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Roland should have known better than to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Fortunately, Dutchy came through, which made Roland smile. He knew Dutchy was a bright kid, if a little bit hemophobic. Lord knows what would happen if Roland brought a volume of Preacher to school and showed him; he'd probably froth at the mouth and faint. But he was a bright kid, he could see that this hair-splitting debate was going nowhere, and he broke the ice in order to put a stop to it. Roland respected that.

Brendan only seemed to elaborate on what Roland was thinking. He agreed that there were other topics that were being overlooked, and that they needed to seriously up their game to get anything done. The idea was only furthered by Madelyn, who suggested that they go on some sort of information campaign.

"I'm glad that things are starting to drift in-"

The introduction of another new girl to the mix interrupted Roland's moment of glory. He looked in her direction, and seeing a fresh new face didn't anger him that much, though it was kind of annoying to be interrupted.
"Yep. Hey there. Come on in. I was just making a speech.
" He waited for the new girl to get comfortable, then resumed.

"-to drift in this direction. Really glad," he said, brightening up from the torpor that the whole motivation debate set him in. "I've actually been toying with this sort of idea for a long time. I wanted to make pamphlets with citations and well-researched information that's nevertheless simple enough for the layman to understand. And while the Iraq War was far down on my list of choices back when I was brainstorming it (because Brendan is absolutely right), I suppose it's as good a start as any. I'm gonna be hitting the books, then I'm going to start finding out ways to print and publish pamphlets. Any of you guys are free to help me out if you want. I'm going to leave it to... Sarah over there."

He nodded in the direction of the girl who first shot down his argument. (No harm done. She was just being honest.)

"The people do need information. It's so easy to get mislead these days, all because people don't like research. I want to change that. I want to help point people in the right direction. I want politics to be more than a disgraceful field that makes people risk their futures by avoiding it like dog shit on their front lawn. I want to feel like I made a difference in electing people who do their fucking jobs right."

Roland stood up from his chair and angled his eyes up, above the heads of those sitting across from him and to the intersection of wall and ceiling. "I want to spread the truth."

Seven seconds passed. Roland knew the precise number because he could hear the clock ticking. On the eighth second his gaze broke and he was hurriedly sitting back down again, averting the eyes of anyone else in the room. "Sorry, everyone. Sorry, sorry. Got a little carried away there. Probably distracted by some kind of bad movie or something. Just.. just ignore that."

He coughed and looked across the table. "Still, I think it'd be worth a shot."

When Vera came in Sarah gave her a quick "not at all" accidentally speaking over Roland in the process, after which she whispered a quiet "sorry" to herself as much as anyone.

When Roland finished she sat in stunned silence. To say that the discussion was going well would have been a HUGE understatement. In her mind every speaker so far, whether they knew it or not, was doing brilliantly, and until then there'd just been a massive grin on her face listening to them talk, except obviously when that wasn't appropriate. It took her a moment to realise it was kind of 'her turn' to speak after Roland's prompt.

"Hey, umm, first thing I want to say is that..." She was scratching her head again, she always found it difficult complimenting people without sounding corny. "is that I'm really impressed. With all this discussion, with all of you, and I think the ideas you're saying are things we should definitely do." She emphasised that last point subconsciously hammering her upturned palm with her fist.

"But I think we need to settle on what we're going to campaign around before we worry too much about the how, so I might run through all the issues.. and there's a lot.... and well..." She wasn't sure how to say the next part.

"Okay, guys I think I'm going to have to say something which on the face of it you'll probably not.. uh.. that you'll probably dismiss. But you shouldn't. Or I don't think you should. Anyway! Okay, let me try to explain. On this agenda thing I wrote down all the issues and major problems I could think of. And I agree, there's just so much happening that it feels wrong to concentrate on just one. We have Iraq and Afghanistan, our forces have crossed the border into Pakistan, our leaders are also threatening Iran and supporting Israel in killing innocent Palestinians and...There's the genocide we're supporting in Sri Lanka. And beyond that we have the whole situation in Africa, massacres we're committing by proxy for.. for resources and minerals and and coca cola syrup... Then you've got South America." She took another gulp of water and cleared her throat again. "I mean, we've already launched a coup against Chavez in 2002 and now there's talk of reviving the fleet down there and we've built a bunch of new army bases in Colombia in preparation for another war against Venezuela and Bolivia and Ecuador. Hell, they might take another shot at Cuba."

She stopped to look around. "Sorry, am I going on too much?" The others seemed to be fine with it so she continued.

"And then there's the non-killing stuff. We all know about the situation with the Climate, how we need to reduce the CO2 concentration to... 350 ppm? Is that right? And how the government is continuing with business as usual despite this being our planet we're talking about. We're screwing over Refugees, Racism's still prevalent, LGBTI people can't marry, women only earn 70% or so of the average male wage, they're breaking the Unions, Native rights still suck, basic healthcare isn't even properly provided, the Christian lobby is trying to get creationism taught in schools." She paused. That'd been a long talk, though about on par with the others in the group it seemed.

"I think the length of this summary is kinda indicative of the scale of how incredibly fucked up everything is."

Another sip of water. She felt kind of confident now, she knew where her logic was going for once, even if no-one else quite could.

"What this all gets back to is the.. 'controversial' thing I wanted to say. These problems are systemic, they're inherent in Capitalism. Behind every single one is the profit motive. And until we recognise that anything we do to agitate will only be treating the symptoms, not the disease."

She waited a couple of seconds to see how they reacted to that, she had the feeling it'd be familiar to a few of them, especially since they seemed pretty aware politically, before she remembered something important.

"That said, I'm uh, not saying we should turn this into a little marxist clique. It's by engaging in these issues, in the movements around them, that you reveal to people how the system works, why it's horrible, and how we can change it." That felt like a good conclusion to her.

She sat down again, and realising that'd ended up being quite a speech she added a final "Sorry that was a bit long. Thank you. And uhh... since I think we're starting to run a bit low on time maybe we should talk about what issues you're really interested in and... How we might start organising around them. I mean there's thousands of ways we can raise consciousness so it might be better to concentrate on settling on some issues to start with instead of discussing the merits of, say, propaganda facepainting."

Rashid didn't mean to "destroy" Roland like that. It wasn't exactly something to apologize for, but he realized he shouldn't have gone "Full Imam" so quickly. At least everyone continued to be polite about it, and this was the debate club, everyone was already used to the (metaphorical, not literal) heat.

"So let's focus on the future rather then the past, shall we? I think we're all in agreement that the war in the Middle East is near unjustifiable. But what can we, the students of Bayview Secondary, do about it? Oh! Idea! Can anyone think of something that could potentially help lessen the tensions in the Middle East? Some kind of solution…, a proposal, anything that could help?"

Dutchy had a point. They weren't all gathered here just to talk about something, they were activists. The word based off 'activity.' Action. They had to do something that would speak louder than words. Brendan built on that.

"How about raising awareness about all this stuff? I know you Americans, and your pre-disposition to protest against this conflict in the Middle East, but...there are HEAPS of more important things going on in the world that barely graze the news that we could be talking about; We all know everything there is to know about Iraq, how we're only there to institute American policy, and all that jazz. But....okay, so if I seem to be repeating stuff that everyone already knows, since everyone here is pretty obviously well versed in what's going on in the world, but it's just because I'm new, I swear. People at my school were under the impression that Australia was ruled by a President, and couldn't even find England on a map.

Rashid's eyes widened. There was definitely an idea forming now. The action was forming under the words.

...most high school groups like the environmental club usually just settle for the bare minimum of awareness. I think that we could do better than that. We may not be able to go straight to our senator and be like 'we want you to stop the war now' but we could possibly do something to catch his attention. We could focus on something small that we could take out of the equation of the war, like possibly organizing a 'bring our troops home' rally, or bringing people's attentions towards the atrocities of the Patriot Act. Something small like that could eventually snowball into a big change for our entire country.

The chance to outdo another club added flavor. And the whole debate in general certainly did its job with attracting another follower, as Vera Osbourne walked in during Roland's turn to speak, temporarily halting Rashid's runaway train of thought.

"Hello, sorry i'm late. Had to finish off this painting for Mr Corwin... Um, I'm not too late to join, am I?"

Rashid raised his hand to wave. "Nah, the more the merrier and the more money whoever led us all here will get when the NSA drops in," he added jokingly. As much as she looked like she needed some peace and quiet, it seemed like some good ol' activism talk was the ambience she really needed.

"I'm gonna be hitting the books, then I'm going to start finding out ways to print and publish pamphlets. Any of you guys are free to help me out if you want. I'm going to leave it to... Sarah over there."

Roland suggested pamphlets. No, it has to be more than that. Something that won't give the eco-club a reason to one-up us with more trash bins. But Vera's entrance had made it hard to get his train of thought rolling again. Thankfully, he had a lot of time when Sarah got up to speak.

"I think the length of this summary is kinda indicative of the scale of how incredibly fucked up everything is."

And, perhaps unsurprisingly given she was the de facto leader she kept going. Sure, Rashid knew there was a LOT of stuff that was fucked up, but it looked like she was about to snap if the world kept going along its course by the end of the night. Still, although he admitted to himself that all the agreement was spacing him out for all the elaboration, it did at least give him time to put an idea together again. With every person speaking, a piece fell into place. And as he stood up, he figured it was time to start the avalanche.

"I think I got an idea," he said as he stood up, smiling as he propped his arms on the table. "October 24 is United Nations Day. Granted, the UN aren't able to do shit because Bridges and Hu Jintao have veto powers, but that's besides the point."

He then took a deep breath. "We should hold a big informational...cultural...event...festival...thingy. To show that even though some of us aren't even voting age, we're not all just pop-culture tweens obsessed with Twilight. And to show that some Americans can locate small countries on the map at least."

Rashid could say Twilight with disgust here, as the book AND the associated movie were all the rage with his little sister's book circle, though the family did have their inevitable meeting about books that might be 'questionable.' Still, he could never imagine vampires acting like that and people loving them for it. Forget religion, that just wasn't right at all.

He then turned to Brendan, "We all have a few connections, we can get them to help out-" Rashid then hesitated, looking afraid for a brief moment with his Freudian slip. Now his parents HAD to get involved in whatever he was planning, if it actually went through. And suddenly, he didn't like where this was going. He didn't hate it, he just didn't like it as much as he planned.

"The primaries are going on, if we can get ourselves a candidate to drop by, that'd help too. Even though...we're all probably sure they won't listen." Whatever hope he had in his voice trailed off a little as he addressed the fact that as teens in the 21st Century, they were also probably more cynical about the issues than they were aware of them.

Officially, the Hassan family were always openly skeptical about political candidates in America given that they had to cater to both the Israel Lobby and the Saudi Oil lobby by default, and neither of them were keen to budge on the refugees they had driven out, and taken in and hadn't done shit about, respectively. But as much as the next President was still likely to be a cog in the well-oiled (pun intended) machine, one of the Democratic candidates did seem to inspire Rashid that maybe things would change.

"All great change came from the grassroots making their way to the top. Why can't we make that happen too? We got, what, 2-3 months? We can do this," he said, letting some silence settle in before sitting back down.

Okay, so my parents are gonna be a part of this after all. Hopefully it'll be something they'll be proud of me for... Rashid thought.

After Harun had finished telling his story about that poor government official (David Kelly, that was his name! Or something like that), Dutchy was the first to respond, going into a quick, admittedly rather flustered speech about how murder was bad (which you couldn't exactly disagree with, murder was pretty bad, especially for something petty like politics and oil), before finally deciding to stand up, when he suddenly became a lot more fluid and clear. He then suggested that they actually do something to try and help solve the situation. Yeah, that was a good idea. Sitting here talking about it and slagging off the politicians weren't helping anyone, unfortunately, no matter how fun it was.

After sitting down, Dutchy poked Harun in his side and whispered to him, about how standing up made him smarter. Harun smirked and chuckled quietly before replying "Yeah, ask if they'll let you stand up during the exams." Then the new Australian kid stood up, the one who up until now had mostly been silent and unassuming, lurking in the corner, introduced himself as Brendan and began talking. And he had a point. They couldn't exactly do much right now. Harun's parents were a zookeeper and a computer technician, hardly jobs that had large amounts of political clout, and he imagined his classmates' parents weren't that much more powerful. There wasn't much the group itself could do, except raise awareness for more obscure issues and get them well-known in St. Paul and beyond. And now that Brendan mentioned it, this school did need some proper recycling bins, but that was an issue for another day.

The debate continued for a bit more. Most people seemed in favour of doing one thing or another to raise awareness, and another girl joined the club, who Harun recognised as Vera Osborne, and Harun gave her a quick nod to mean hello just in case she looked at him. As the debate went around the room and everyone added their points and contributions, Rashid brought up the possibility of doing something on the UN day and maybe getting a candidate in the Presidential primaries to pop around. It seemed plausible.

"Yeah," Harun spoke up, once again leaning back on his chair, "that seems doable. I've seen it done before." Of course, most of the times it had been shown on TV, the kids had been deprived of any difficult questions, probably the Twilight fans who couldn't locate countries like Austria or Venezuela on a map Rashid was referring to. "We just need to know what candidate to try and ask." Well, Republican candidates, being right-wing, were out of the question. And most of the Democrat candidates too.

Dutchy couldn't stop nodding in agreement as each of the students began to throw out their own ideas. Things were progressing fabulously, and a clear plan of attack was being drafted up.

Fear us evildoers and bad people, we're the... THEAVENGERSOFBAYVIEW.

AND I CALL BEING THOR.

Once more the conversation began to delve into more complex matters, the only real interruption being when a new student entered the room. Vera Osbourne was a nice girl, at least, Dutchy never really saw anything to contradict it, so he smiled and welcomed her to the group.

Unfortunately, when Dutchy's mind eventually drifted back towards the conversation at hand, he was hopelessly lost. Roland was speaking, and he didn't exactly know what they were saying again.

I don't care if Iraq, Iran and US Foreign Policy ends up showing a bajillion results on Google, I'm reading it and I'm coming here PREPARED next time!

Regardless, they were on the right track. Dutchy watched the group go about the room and he heard quite a few ideas get tossed around, ideas he was fond of.

They took my suggestion! Yay, they're thinking!

As Harun sat down next to him, the room once more grew quiet. Dutchy looked about before shrugging his shoulders, a big grin present on his face.

"Anything you guys do, protests, food drives, stickers, anything that will help people? I'm behind you 100%! Unfortunately... I 'misunderestimated' the amount of info I needed to know, so, uhm, just go ahead keep talking or.., break or whatever is next! If I think of anything helpful I'll throw it out there guys." He said.