A Note to the Democrats

I'm volunteering for the democrats this season, and they asked us to "share our personal story," explaining why we make the phone calls and pound the pavement.

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 43^rd 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.