What inspired you to get involved:
There are giant inequities in our country.
They come in many flavors: gender, racial, urban, rural, economic. I am
involved because I can’t stand the inequities.
What issue is most important to you and why:
Equity is most
important to me, equity in school, equity in jobs, equity in politics, equity
in the market place, equity in the community. I’m not religious and I don’t go
to church anymore, but I do value the precept, do unto others as you would have
them do unto you. It’s simply a decent way to live.
I am a proud Democrat because:
I’m not. I’m really not
a proud Democrat. I’m a reluctant Democrat. The democrats are almost as
complicit as the republicans in allowing our economic dichotomy to grow and
fester. But democracy is all about compromise. Once I didn’t compromise.
Instead I voted for Ralph Nader. That was an insane vote. If Ralph Nader had
not run in 2000, it’s as certain as hypotheticals can be that Al Gore would
have been our 43rd President, and it’s again as certain as
hypotheticals can be that we would never have had an Iraq War. Imagine, no Iraq
War. Wow.
But even without the
Iraq War, the inequities that are tearing us apart would be here. I’m a
reluctant Democrat because today there are only two viable parties, the
democrats and the republicans, and the democrats far more than the republicans
believe government is not “the problem,” as a very white and privileged
candidate once quipped, but rather democrats believe government should be a
powerful, necessary, critically urgent solution to the multitude of inequities
that come with capitalism and democracy.
