I Will Vote in the 2018 Mid-Terms Because

  • The world I see for my son, his family, and their families’ futures still has coral reefs, old-growth forests and vast expanses of pristine undeveloped land that I have national ownership in.
  • Self-education on critical issues opens me to the ideas and challenges others face, which enriches my life.
  • The rich ethnic heritage of black, Hispanic and Asian women is as important to them is as my ethnicity is to me. We are each other.
  • I support leaders who have the courage and self-reflection to honor animals’ Your Vote Counts buttoncontributions to human lives.
  • I want the restoration of serious conversation about issues that matter to Americans like health care, preserving the environment and gun violence, not junk inflammatory issues designed to separate us.
  • I actively support courageous young adults who insist on free and safe school environments.
  • I support the basic human right of legal recognition for who one chooses to love, and for legal recognition of each person’s service in government and in the military.
  • Inspired leadership is now a requisite skill in any elected official I will consider voting for.
  • I insist that my elected leaders represent the entire country with courage, intellect and grace.
  • I expect leadership that respects and reflects the extraordinary variety of beings who live in this world and who want to partner with each other.
  • I cannot, at this time, afford the privilege of feeling fragile from the assaults to my sense of decency, self-respect and autonomy.
  • I will not tolerate self-aggrandized ignorance in my political leadership.
  • Michael Soule reminded me that our global crisis is really the Sixth Great Extinction, Earth’s only extinction event caused by an animal [us], not volcanic activity or an ice age.
  • I now feel forced to examine how I contribute to global warming, and to hold myself and my elected officials accountable.
  • I’m reminded that, unlike a Chinese exchange student after college graduation, young American adults are not pigeon-holed into a subsistence job and into a dormitory with a shared bath and a pre-written future.
  • As Wendell Berry wrote: “We need to go now and again into places where our work is disallowed, where our hopes and plans have no standing.” Those places are critical to the quality of life of every being, and they must be preserved.
  • Another woman’s sexual assault is as important to me as my own.

VOTING IS VOICE.