I have been associated with OUTSIDE! since the very beginning,
and the most frequently asked question I get is, "Why?".
"Why say all of this?"
"Why do you do this?"
"Why don't you stop?"
"Why do you think this will change anything?"
Of all the "why"'s I am asked, I cringe everytime I hear that last one... "Why do you think this will change anything?"
I don't know what scares me more... The fact that we won't stand up for ourselves, or the fact that we don't think it will matter
when we do. We are programmed on an unbellievable scale, it is not even cool. Since your first outside influences, you were told that nothing
you did mattered. They ran at you from a thousand different angles telling you how your creativity was wrong. How your free thinking was wrong. How every thought you
had that was original was wrong. Religion, media, government, pollitics, police, all of them! All they can say is that anything you do will never make a difference. That the ONLY way you could ever survive was to fall into the pack instinct of
primitive man, conform your thought process to that of the "norm", and proceed to give up any evidence of distinction between you and the drone at your side.
That is what school/government/society teaches us.. no, conditions us to do. So what do we do when we don't know any other way?
Truth be told, OUTSIDE! has changed quite a few things. Granted, everything is relative and the effects of our lil' 'zine will
never effect most out there... but in our sheltered school, it has done a thing or two. The thing we are most proud of is that we were able to get a rule in
our "Student Code of Conduct" (I HATE the way that sounds...) changed. The rule demanding "prior consent" for any publicatino not school sponsored and handed out on campus, was
ruled unconstitutional after being employed in our district for eons. May not mean much to most of you out there, but like I said... we are proud of it.
Now that we have beaten around the bush, maybe we should answer the "why?" 's... Okay, simple enough. We choose to participate in OUTSIDE!
because we are under the "deranged" notion that maybe we can change something more. We all know that the fight is fixed long before any of us enter the arena, but one of these
times they have to hit the floor. The way they dominate us, deman and belittle us... it isn't right. They know it isn't right... but they still do it anyway.
Everyone of us knows, deep down in the center of our being, that to dominate others is wrong. To crush the will of others, to brake the free thinkers into fodder and to
destroy untampered potential before it is ever truly developed is WRONG. As long as there are people who are determined to dominate others, there will always be those who will fight it.
Well, like it or not, that is my reasoning. Will I ever stop? No... Long after OUTSIDE! is nothing more than a whimsical whisper at a high school reunion, I will
still carry everything I have poured into it within me. I believe in it 100%... mind, body and athiest soul. Though OUTSIDE! may die in the courts, or the school or in society
in general, the thought it was founded upon
will live in far too many people, more than we could EVER hope to reach, for it to die.
