Values & Voting
It starts by checking your voter registration
“Today's witch hunts and conspiracy theories are no different from those of the past. They function as diversions from the true evil: all forms of inequality and systems of oppression.” ~ Celeste Larsen. Heal the Witch Wound (p. 31). Red Wheel Weiser. Kindle Edition.
I was on the call with 154,000 women and I wasn’t nearly as excited as I hoped I would be. What was I looking for exactly? I was looking to go backward in time and redo our past mistakes. So, I left with some hope, some bitterness, and a lot of skepticism.
The call was littered with celebrities - only three of whom I know (Glennon Doyle, P!nk, and Megan Rapinoe (because I live in Portland, Oregon)). There were influencers, evening television actresses, and plenty of rich, white women.
When the call started, I had to remind myself that it was lacking in diversity because it was focused on white women. It started a little late, likely due to tech challenges, but it ended promptly after two hours. We broke Zoom four times.
In 7 minutes, $1 million was raised. In 24 hours, $8.5 million was raised. As of today, $11 million.
When we put our minds to it, we can show up. We showed up for one night, but will we show up for the week, month, year, and time after that? Will we continue on this track of support, or will we revert back to our supposed comfort?
All the speakers did a talking to to those of us in the room. 47% of white women voted for Trump in 2016 (Pew). We were responsible for him getting elected. We are responsible for what happened afterward: the stacking of the courts, allowing a gross misogynist the keys to the highest house in the land, and the continued destruction and destabilization of systems we’ve held dear.
I have progressive values, clear to many of those around me. And, yet, I don’t believe most of my progressive values are all that radical. Some things I believe in are:
Free and fair elections
Access to clean water
Access to clean air
Access to clean soil
Access to adequate housing
Bodily autonomy
Ability to figure yourself out
Ability to walk down the street without fear of harm
Ability for children to be taught without fear of being shot
Honest pay for an honest day’s work
We have a job to do. We have to talk to those of us we care about about our values. When someone starts discussing a policy or a candidate, and you don’t know the specific thing they are referencing, it’s okay to say you haven’t heard that or you don’t know and pivot back to your values. Sometimes, those specific things can be a diversion from talking about the things that matter to us.
Here’s the truth: no candidate is perfect. No candidate will ever represent all that is important to us. But we are born into a social contract, and in that social contract, our ancestors overwhelmingly held the belief that free and fair elections and the ability to choose who represents us are values to hold dear.
In that spirit, check your voter registration today and share it with five friends. Truly, we must all come together, talk about our values, and stick to those values conversations. It’s in those values conversations, where we kindly and compassionately talk about our values, that we begin to show up for each other and those who are most negatively impacted by our world. So, start showing up today.
Check your voter registration here: https://links.impactive.io/t/f1xbs9vv.