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BERKELEY - They want to change society; they have strong opinions; yet they don't vote. It's a paradox that at least some of the 88,000 eligible voters in Berkeley -- people who feel removed from the mainstream -- choose to live with.
They defy the stereotype of non-voters, generally assumed to be young or poor. Even in North Berkeley, where campaign signs are seemingly on every telephone pole and living room window, one can find these conscientious objectors. They don't offer excuses -- they offer reasons
"I really don't trust any of it," says John, 38, a welder who declined to give his last name. "I trust what I can see and repair with my own two hands and that's it."
John says his father, a defense company engineer, and his mother, head organizer of Chicago's Socialist Party, instilled in him early on a deep mistrust of the government -- a feeling that has grown stronger over the years.
"These people are such puppets," he says of politicians. "I can literally see the strings attached to the muscles in their faces."
John has only voted twice in his life, once after he turned 18 and once when his wife asked him to. Now, after a divorce and years of living hand-to-mouth, John admits he is bitter.
"I know things are not stacked on the average man's favor," he says. "My wife ended up with this nice house and I get this car," he says, gesturing with a grease-covered hand to his rust-red 1960 Dodge Dart in need of a new passenger window.
She also ended up with his four kids. John spends all but $500 of his $2300 monthly paycheck to support them. Without his girlfriend and his under-the-table bicycle repair business to help pay the $1350 rent on his McGee Ave. home, he says he would be on the streets. For him, November 5 is just another day trying to survive.
"Why am I going to waste my day voting when I can go work on a bicycle and make some money that my [ex-] wife or the government won't take?" he asks.
He needs all he can get. Every time he misses child support payments, the state revokes his driver's license. It's a case of politicians making laws to get votes, not to help families, according to John.
So why not vote in new politicians? John says it's because all the candidates support the status quo.
"America's too wimpy to have a revolution," he says. "I know in my lifetime, things will never change."
Krista H., a 36-year-old writer/filmmaker who hasn't voted for 10 years, says she believes the "insane selfish mentality" of the wealthy middle class prevents meaningful -- and long overdue -- change.
"There's still a lot of people with too much money," she says. "Look at all these SUVs -- it's disturbing. Who am I to say they should give it away? But by holding on to what they have, it's really destructive."
The culture of excess, which exploded during the dot-com boom, makes people afraid to vote with their hearts for fear of being hit in the wallet, says Krista. She insists she's not bitter toward the rich. But the way they act -- or don't act -- makes her feel hopeless.
The fact that the media is influenced by money deepens the desperation, she says. She recalls her work on a documentary about Eleanor Roosevelt and how the big-name sponsors forced the producers to downplay experts' theories that Roosevelt was a lesbian.
"This is supposed to be a country based on free speech, but money is the driving force behind everything," she says. "We still wander around thinking we can say whatever we want, but the media isn't free anymore."
That's why Krista doesn't feel she is getting the whole picture at election time -- and why she doesn't plan to vote this week.
"I want some sense that there's more of a choice," she says, adding that she'd like to see every candidate get free and equal airtime. Until such radical ideas appear on the ballot, Krista says she has no reason to go to the polls.
"I don't have a lot of money, so I don't have as much to lose as other people," she says. "I can afford to be very idealistic. But that's what we need -- we have problems."