Going from uninformed voter to Volunteer Mercenary:

The importance of voting and volunteering, and the negative realities of white identity politics

In August of 2020, I already wrote some of this. As a cis-gendered, straight, white male, I’ve always been the “default” setting of the U.S. political system. As a Democratic voter despite these realities about myself, I’ve been in the minority within my voting bloc. It needs to change. On June 24, 2022, something white voters voted for in 2016 and for many years prior came to fruition with the Supreme Court of the United States overturning the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. I do mean all white people when I say the 6–3 decision in the Dobbs ruling is our responsibility. White voters as a bloc have not voted as a majority for the Democratic Party in a Presidential election since the Civil Rights Act was finally passed in 1964. Even President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 win only saw him win 43% of white voters. From 1976 through 2012, on average the Democratic Party only received 40.6% of the vote share of white voters. This is before we address those voting for dead gorillas, writing in cartoon characters, protest voting with losing primary candidates, or simply not voting in the first place.

In 2016, I was 24 years old. I wasn’t a volunteer. I was naïve in my privilege in thinking this country wouldn’t be hateful enough to actually overlook the long history of racism and sexism in voting for that perpetual business failure. White people did it anyway despite a declining vote share, with an often reference 53% of white women, but closer to 59% of all white voters. Early exit polling placed these numbers at 52% of white women and 62% of white men voting for Trump directly. In 2020, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris only won white voters by a few percentage points more than Hillary Clinton did, but it was enough to swing the electoral college thanks to the real base of the Democratic Party, Black women.

I wasn’t a volunteer, just another voter in New Jersey, which has safely voted for Democratic Presidential nominees for basically as long as I’ve been alive despite our sometimes erratic state politics. The 2016 primary had effectively been decided by the time I cast my vote. I cast my 2016 primary ballot for Senator Bernie Sanders because I didn’t bother to vet him, and figured the talking heads on television would continue to talk about progressive things if he didn’t get completely obliterated. I was enthusiastic to vote for Secretary Clinton and excited for a world where my niece would grow up with her as the first woman President of the United States. I warned people about the courts, much like she did. It obviously wasn’t enough and part of my drive to volunteer comes from the regret of being a part of the problem through my own willful ignorance, despite voting against it. In the end, the burden is not on Black, Asian, Latinx, or any combination of non-white voters to call out white voters for their ignorance at best, and willful perpetuation of a racist patriarchal society dominated by the ideals of white men. It’s on us.

Mass hysteria on places like Twitter, where most people don’t match the demographics of the voting blocs that actually show up, tends to promote short memories and ignorance. In the alternate universe where Hillary received at least 4 years, the make-up of the SCOTUS is drastically different. The sourcing is thin, but maybe Justice Kennedy doesn’t abruptly retire with some awkward coincidences, leading the way for Justice Kavanaugh’s appointment. Maybe the textualist-when-convenient Justice Gorsuch doesn’t take the appointment that white voters allowed Mitch McConnell to block AG Garland from receiving when he controlled the Senate. In that world, Ruth Bader Ginsburg may have comfortably retired, secure in the knowledge that she wouldn’t be replaced by an unqualified, 50-year-old zealot from a religious group accused of gross child sexual abuse and sexual misconduct who repeatedly argued the Affordable Care Act should be overturned, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Though it is a separate discussion from the one I’d like to have, the argument that RBG should have retired during the Obama administration is ultimately rooted in a combination of sexism and a denial of the same political reality where again, Mitch McConnell was blocking the Garland appointment anyway. Even in a reality where she would have retired, Roe would have still been reversed with a 5–4 decision.

While I was numb for a while like many others after the results trickled in, I suppose it can’t be too much of a shock to those who actually did bother to read the Mueller Report on interference by Russia in the 2016 election. In Section II. Russian “Active Measures” Social Media Campaign, the IRA’s usage of fake accounts promoting division is well documented, despite the many black blocks of redactions. Footnote 67 explicitly reads “Other individualized accounts included (Twitter User) MissouriNewsUS (an account with 3,800 followers that posted pro-Sanders and anti-Clinton material). Footnote 70 reads “For example, one IRA account tweeted “To those people, who hate the Confederate flag. Did you know that the flag and the war wasn’t about slavery, it was all about money.” The Tweet received over 40,000 responses.” I don’t have much to add on that one, except for this. While running for President, then-candidate Kamala Harris spoke of how race was America’s Achilles heel in reference to the 2016 election interference. She spoke of how Russia’s interference was simply a campaign of misinformation with regard to this, particularly targeted towards Black people. While the Mueller Report speaks of the GRU targeting tech firms relating to elections, an often-overlooked piece is found on the first ten pages of the document. Months before an August 2016 meeting, Manafort caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting. In other words, voter data which would include demographics in swing states, was simply served up on a silver platter for the accounts who would target America’s Achilles heel on race and enflame tensions. I do believe the U.S. Government’s conclusions that votes weren’t switched in the machines. They simply energized the racists that were already here.

On June 13, 2017, Senator Kamala Harris came into my life in a big way when she made then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions nervous. She would do so again the next day. A few years before this, I was a Criminal Justice student with a Sociology minor, with a research internship working in juvenile crime prevention at the time. During this time, I was an integral part of a project geared at connecting families to social services and keeping kids out of the justice system in Cumberland County in New Jersey. Whether it was using California’s data and her own stances (which she has discussed multiple times at length since my old time in school) to write about the ethics of the death penalty for my senior ethics course, or reading up on initiatives she pioneered such as Back on Track for my actual job at the time, the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee has always been a part of my story in some way.

By the time Kamala Harris announced her candidacy for President of the United States on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 21, 2019, I was already all-in. A key reason I supported Kamala Harris for President was her desire to achieve some form of universal healthcare, whether it be through her overly-publicized co-sponsorship of the Sanders Medicare for All Bill, her far less publicized co-sponsorship of Senator Schatz’s State Public Option Act in 2017, Senator Bennet’s Medicare X Choice Act of 2017, or her own personal proposal of Medicare for All which differed from the Sanders bill despite a tendency of those who oppose her to equate the two as the same bill. This was personal for me.

Even earlier though, before Kamala Harris even ran to become the District Attorney of San Francisco, she helped create a task force initiative for sexually exploited youth, got safe houses set up for victims, and got massage parlor prostitution brothels shut down. She details this in her book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. She additionally fought for survivors in more ways, such as fighting to ensure that those convicted of trafficking crimes involving minors couldn’t keep any financial benefits they accumulated from those heinous acts. Under Kamala’s tenure, the AG office of California was one of 32 agencies in 20 states that received $1.6 million in grant money from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Initiative to eliminate rape kit backlogs. Under her leadership, the Rapid DNA Service Team received the DOJ Award for Professional Innovation in Victim’s Services because of clearing that expansive 1,300 kit backlog and overperforming expectations. In light of the Roe decision, where many states are already refusing to even permit exceptions for cases of rape or incest, it is more important than ever to have such an advocate in the White House for survivors like those I know personally who would have been impacted by these laws years ago. Kamala’s relentless pursuit of justice for vulnerable people is the closest thing I have to a political awakening moment, as I can’t pinpoint one precise moment. Her dismantling of Jeff Sessions alerted me to her in a precise way, but I was politically already on my way to her views if not already there.

When I was younger, perhaps due to 12 years of Catholic school, I did believe that these exceptions and the endangerment of a mother’s life were the only situations where a procedure like abortion should be permissible. There are several fatal flaws with this logic. By suggesting abortion should only be accessible in these circumstances, we are suggesting that people capable of giving birth need to be violated first in order to have autonomy over their own bodies. Abortion is the treatment for ectopic pregnancies as well as miscarriages that the human body won’t release, among other things. The reproductive freedom of choice and medical privacy must unequivocally be protected as a whole.

In the earlier hyper-linked article, it’s also noted that Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that Griswold v. Connecticut (guaranteed the right of married couples to use contraception), and Obergefell v. Hodges (legalized same-sex marriage) could also be revisited. It is not an exaggeration to say rights beyond medical privacy are under active assault by the Republican Party and the judges they’ve appointed. Jim Obergefell himself even said it was quite telling that Justice Thomas left out the case of Loving v. Virginia (ensured the legality of interracial marriage) in naming these other cases because it affects him personally. Loving v. Virginia, is a case of historical precedence which would become part of the legal basis for the Obergefell case decision in the first place. To be as blunt as possible, if the Republican Party attempts to overturn same-sex marriage and succeeds in the same manner as Roe, Justice Thomas will likely be dead of old age by the time Loving v. Virginia is revisited in logical order.

Shifting back to my own political journey in supporting Kamala Harris, her inclusivity of my hearing loss is another major reason I stepped so far out of my comfort zone in 2020. I have moderate-severe hearing loss in both ears and a few other conditions that are not necessarily visible relating to my mental health. I wear hearing aids, which are not typically fully covered by most insurance companies without special discount partnerships, unless the insurer happens to be a specific form of Medicare. I’m fortunate in that my loss will not lead me to deafness, but also in that the ACA provision that allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance plan through age 26 means that I was able to use my father’s better plan in order to afford my hearing aids in the first place. Kamala Harris consistently made a point to mention expanding coverage to hearing aids in her town halls rather than offering multiple purchasing options which wouldn’t benefit me in the long run. My mom never quite understood why I was so adamantly supportive of Kamala compared to the rest of the field, until we watched a town hall together and she heard Kamala speak about my issues directly. My mother supported Kamala Harris from that moment onward and ultimately Joe Biden in the 2020 primary and general election after she dropped out. She was as happy as I was to see her ultimately get to the White House.

After 2016, I followed every account imaginable for answers and gave myself a crash course in politics. Unfortunately this comes with the reality of learning biases of reporters and just generally large accounts who have actively dismissed leaders of the Democratic Party. Kaitlin Collins of CNN for example, got her start at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Wire. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd has been called out by Fox News (ironic isn’t it?) due to his wife’s political involvement on campaigns for Bernie Sanders in 2020. It may not be you Chuck, but you should absolutely have disclosed something so significant at any point you gave an interview. And that’s before you actually get into the wild world of right wing media like John Solomon just to throw a random name out there. Murdoch’s greatest accomplishment may be convincing everyone that the “liberal media” is actually a thing. It’s not liberal, it’s just dominated by white people. Even frequent Trump target Jake Tapper, surely may have benefitted from coincidentally dating Monica Lewinsky.

Where Twitter is concerned, large accounts like those of strategist Amy Siskind routinely get boosted by “the resistance”, which may as well be a feel-good club of white accounts who don’t actually sign up to volunteer. This is the same woman who is touted in past articles as a 2008 Hillary Clinton supporter, despite voting for McCain and Palin by her own admission, and who once wrote an article in support of Sarah Palin for President that eventually picked up enough heat that she wrote a Medium piece defending her old writings as defending conservative women from sexist attacks. The heat was simply a Black woman pointing out she had Fox News appearances as a “Republican strategist”.

On Twitter I was a bit of a wildcard for a while, digging up negative things on 2020 primary candidates while propping up the positives of Kamala’s record as part of a loose collective called “United For Kamala”. The group was mainly (not entirely) comprised of former Clinton supporters who were used to discussing politics in locked Facebook groups due to harassment during the 2016 primary. Bluntly, there were over 200 members, several of whom have large followings to this day as they make podcasts, fundraise, or just enjoy themselves, but maybe 15-20 actually did volunteer out of this group beyond boosting information. I would know, I’m the person who organized the private group chats when asked by its real founders because I knew which people had issues with each other from my time associating with self-proclaimed members of the “K-Hive” despite my eventual disillusion with the hashtag. That disillusion comes from a very small number of supporters who would go on to grift money out of the term and a weird obsession from mostly white, far-left internet trolls who had supported candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who would effectively start using the term as a replacement for racist slurs like the n-word when they weren’t accusing a group of primarily Black women of being white men using fake accounts. Many of those trolls still do this. Depending on which Twitter user you ask, you’ll get a very different story of the beginnings of U4K or on the wide usage of the hashtag for #KHive. In all honesty, none of that clique-filled bullshit matters. The work is what’s important, and many supporters continue to do it in some capacity whether it be via friend-banking, phone-banking, text-banking, or canvassing for various Democratic candidates. Some Kamala Harris supporters who did far more than most, have found well-deserved success, such as the wonderful Reecie Colbert, who continues to provide necessary commentary on a variety of issues on shows such as the Roland Martin Unfiltered Show and the Clay Cane Show on SiriusXM radio.

Twitter was an outlet for me, but it was Online Camp Kamala where I got my first taste of volunteer training. Anatole Jenkins, Hester Leyser, and Alaina Haworth were the superstars who taught me the value of sharing my personal story and the basics of relational organizing. Because of Online Camp Kamala, I was able to be included in online Kamala-based grassroots groups, and the in-person volunteer group Philly For The People. With the health issues many in my family faced at that time, these connections were vital for me. I’m lucky every day that I was able to help host debate watch parties near the Reading Terminal Market, participate in informational events in South Jersey, and help get new voters excited about Kamala Harris in Germantown with people who have since run for office (and won), gone on to work in DC for the administration in some capacity, or who have continued to stay involved where possible.

For me personally, Vice President Kamala Harris was the sort of inspirational candidate that Secretary Clinton and President Barack Obama have been for so many others. I had never donated money for a campaign until she came along. In the 2020 primary due to debate thresholds, I also sent small sums to the Castro, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar campaigns. To this day, the only white male candidate I have donated to is President Joe Biden, primarily via buying campaign merch after he announced Kamala Harris as his pick for Vice President. It wasn’t intentional at first, but in the donations I post to social media relating to various House, Senate, Secretary of State, and Attorneys General races, it unequivocally is now. I don’t refer to myself as a progressive or as a “New Democrat”, though I am likely somewhere in-between. Despite many issues I have with certain progressive candidates who make grandiose sloganeering their priority over tangible action, progressive Rep. Ayanna Pressley said it best as I paraphrase a saying she has repeated many times; that “the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power”. It’s why I tend to support groups like the Collective Pac who are dedicated to building Black political power, or Higher Heights for America, who are dedicated to electing more progressive Black women to positions of political power. Groups like AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress are among other groups I’ve tended to look to as well for various political means.

After Kamala Harris dropped out of the primary, I eventually did the math as many of her supporters did and low-key supported Joe Biden before joining as a volunteer with the PA Democrats during the coordinated campaign and the successful Back-to-Blue effort. Harris was always unequivocally my top choice, with Castro, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar in some form being my back-up choices. Joe won me over on his own merit and platform. I suffer from anxiety and depression, with other symptoms I’d prefer not to disclose. Despite this and the reality of not doing much in 2016 beyond the most bare minimum, I text-banked for candidates at various levels for over 20 states, beyond who I donated to. We didn’t win every race, but sure as hell put up a fight. Beyond speaking to voters on a personal level in New Jersey and the work with PA I’ll detail a bit more, just from my own current recollection as I write this at close to 3:00 am, I took texting shifts or otherwise spoke to voters directly on-demand in Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, South Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, Connecticut, Texas, California, Illinois, New York, Kansas, Georgia, and Wisconsin at various levels. I did this for progressives, moderates, blue dogs, and New Dems.

With the 2020 iteration of the PA Dems’ coordinated campaign, a team I will treasure my time with for the rest of my life, I became a volunteer lead. In short from what I can say publicly, I was one of several “policy leads” during weekend text shifts. If a texting volunteer had a question about specific Biden-Harris policies, I was mainly helping volunteers craft responses that actually addressed what PA voters cared about. We won, decisively. Whether it was a farmer betrayed by that former guy’s tariffs, someone concerned about election interference, or police brutality, I was a go-to for explaining what the administration wanted to do. Because of my deep familiarity with Kamala’s record, I was also a go-to for questions and smears regarding her long record.

Beyond PA, I was most involved with the Human Rights Campaign of Wisconsin, particularly for the Georgia run-off election to elect Reverend Raphael Warnock (This overlap was as random and weird as you’re already thinking despite this not being a typo or mix-up of states). I was a grassroots fundraising captain for Warnock’s campaign with my own ActBlue link before this point, but texting times conflicted with my actual job. We successfully flipped that seat too. I have not remained affiliated with the HRC in any meaningful way and ultimately opted against an application for the PA Steering Committee as I didn’t feel I was the right person to be a representative of the group’s ongoing efforts as a cis-gendered, straight white male, though my laptop proudly has an HRC sticker among the other political ones it’s covered in.

I burnt out by the time we finished electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and a reason I was able to continue was the staff and volunteer leaders in PA in particular. Despite long stretches of time off, I helped out on an Alder race in Wisconsin and found time to volunteer for Maya Wiley for the NYC Mayoral race. In good news, we won that first race. During all of this, I became acquainted with the wonderful members of the Democracy Digital Coalition, fka Biden Digital Coalition, and their outstanding volunteers. For fun, before the actual campaign did it, I was already making campaign merch for Democratic candidates and groups in the Nintendo Switch game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I actually copied the Team Joe rose garden for my own island as a fun note. I have more recently recreated the hat for sale on PA Gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro’s website as a free download, as 2020 has tied me to PA for the foreseeable future.

Currently, I am doing small dollar donations to campaigns at every level during each paycheck, but from a volunteering perspective, I have rejoined the PA Democrats as a volunteer leader for the texting outreach group. Due to real life circumstances, as I type this I am on a mandatory break from texting shifts, but helping where I can in other ways beyond the obvious friend-banking. I hope you’ll join us in electing Josh Shapiro and Austin Davis, Democrats up and down the ballot.

While I have not, and will not fully disclose the circumstances regarding a 7-month break from Twitter I had taken until April of this year, I have since rejoined the site and gone on the attack less. As of September of 2021, among many other accomplishments, Joe Biden was appointing federal judges at an unprecedented rate compared to his counterparts, including the recently sworn-in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom I was hoping would get the nomination, and am thrilled to see the future progress of. The defecit has decreased, lynching is finally a federal crime thanks to the efforts of Democrats like Bobby Rush, and the most significant firearms legislation of the last 30 years has been passed into law.

How does my journey tie into those earlier points on race? It’s simple, I’m still learning and growing. I am not oppressed. I’m a straight white male with some health issues, and more privilege than many others in this country. I will never know the issues of losing bodily autonomy that women, non-binary people, and trans people across the country are currently having to face in light of the Dobbs decision. No employer will ever be able to fire me for my sexual orientation, as many states legally still can. My parents never had to sit me down for “The Talk” because I’m not a Black man in America. Almost hilariously given this piece, I actually haven’t gotten around to reading White Fragility, I just actually paid attention in my Criminal Justice and Sociology classes, was raised by great parents, and have actual life experiences that don’t just involve other white people.

A man on Twitter I don’t follow, Doctor Hentry Rosenberg, recently tweeted “Why is every reactionary decision by the Supreme Court couched as a loss for Biden? It is a loss for the country as a whole and democracy.” It’s because Hillary, her supporters, and other Democrats warned everyone in 2016, and they were right. Admitting this truth requires white voters like myself to acknowledge our own implicit biases, complicity in habitually not electing Democrats, and the reality that we have a tendency to ignore hard conversations with our families and friends.

Senator Sanders, in the final stretch before the 2016 election, tweeted he didn’t believe most people who are thinking about voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist, though he later would half-ass this comment by pointing out his campaign was run on bigotry. I am not blaming Senator Sanders for the results of the 2016 election. In the end, close to 60% of white voters voted for Trump in 2016 whether they used these words as an excuse, never heard them, or repeated it themselves entirely on their own. We as white voters in America ultimately decided it was yet another election we could afford to not give a majority of our votes to the Democratic Party. That small swing of white voters back to Biden-Harris in 2020 didn’t decide the election, Black voters saved the country from itself as they usually do despite the additional barriers they face.

White voters as a bloc do not understand real harm reduction in voting and never will to the extent that non-white voters and particularly Black women do. Democrats did fight for that SCOTUS nomination for Merrick Garland, but white voters ultimately gave the Senate to Mitch McConnell and halted it before it had a real chance anyway.

Democrats are not perfect. There are many “colorblind” racists with class reductionist viewpoints. Some are open racists in ways similar to GOP representatives allegedly “accidentally” celebrating Roe as a victory for “white life”. Some may not care if Loving v. Virginia is overturned, just like Republican Senator Mike Braun who said interracial marriage should be decided by the states before trying to walk it back a few months ago. Democrats have a big tent of views and the party needs to stop centering white voters as often as it occasionally does, stop leaving rural communities behind, learn the actual different needs of different blocs of Latino voters rather than treating Puerto Ricans, Cubans, or Haitians as the same group of people, and so forth. A 50-state strategy needs to involve genuine investment in red states, not a half-assed approach full of empty lip service.

Sometimes a white guy isn’t going to have something click about how racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced something is unless it comes from another white guy. This is true of white women as well. Much of this is by design (see earlier things about media), but it’s not on non-white people to change this. We are the ones with the levers of power and it is incumbent on us to use our privilege to amplify the voices of others. In the 2020 Presidential primary, all candidates had blind spots or some level of issues without exception. Some candidates actively perpetuated racism earlier in their careers, some condoned racist things of the past, and some just outright were racist in their campaigns. When Joe Biden decisively won South Carolina, where Black voters actually made up more than 10% or so of the electorate, many white voters melted down out of bitterness related to the 2016 Sanders campaign or out of anger for newer candidates’ shortcomings.

I’ve mentioned some accomplishments of this administration I’m proud to have played a small role in helping elect. Are there things I wish they were better at? Of course there are. The House is barely held together, and the Senate “majority” is 48 Democrats and 2 Independents who just happen to vote with Democrats more often than Republicans. If Democrats buck historical trends and keep both chambers, while electing 2–3 more Senators, they can craft a filibuster carve-out for the rights protected by Roe v. Wade, if white voters finally let them. White voters as a bloc have been unreliable for so long that white Independents of all stripes and GOP swing voters need to hear how “we need a strong Republican Party” or “bipartisanship is important” in order to maybe be persuaded to vote for Democratic candidates.

There are notable non-white voters and non-white non-voters who perpetuated things like “voting is pointless”, as well as lies or misleading information about various Democrats in 2016 and 2020. But they are far fewer in number, and they are not my responsibility to lecture as a white man who needs to deal with white voters and non-voters I know personally. They’re very likely not within your lane either.

In my own therapy sessions, I’ve talked about my frustrations in volunteering over time. The week before my mom passed away, she encouraged me to keep fighting for the right reasons and even expressed an interest in texting voters with me for the first time. I will live with that knowledge of successfully having those conversations enough that she felt a desire to do that for the greater good despite the many health issues she faced in her daily life that far too many people frankly dismissed while she was alive. We need to reflect on the real lessons of 2016 and stop being children about 2020. At the end of the day, the other side will lead to our destruction and ruin as they nearly did on January 6. I still have all of that information I mentioned digging up on past candidates, but it does nothing helpful for the greater good if I’m just toxic and petty for the sake of a few clicks.

Hold each other accountable, but do the work and elect more Democrats. We cannot afford the alternative. Maybe initially, many white people can given 4 years of the last guy showed that. Don’t be naïve as I was if your focus is simply on ignoring it all and self-preservation. It won’t always be that way and you won’t always be the “right” kind of person. It’s on white people to stop voting for or being willfully ignorant to racism, sexism, misogynoir, and so forth. We all have blind spots and implicit biases. It’s okay to be quiet and listen instead of just posting a hashtag about how you’ll vote like Black women or listen to them. You really can just actually do it.

There are many people I haven’t explicitly named among the various groups I have mentioned in writing this. I haven’t explicitly asked any of the organizers, volunteers, staffers, friends, and acquaintances for permission to name them. They know who they are, and they are largely still fighting for a better country and making me a better person. All of you are capable in some way of doing the same.

Pick a race where a candidate has a platform you like as it makes it easier if it’s within your capacity to volunteer. Donate even $5 to a candidate you like if you can as everything really does go a long way. Volunteer for a group, the general party, or candidates directly. Have the hard, reflective conversations you’ve been avoiding with yourself and others, and vote blue consistently and without hesitation, regardless of how you get to that point.

As the great John Lewis said in his final op-ed, “the vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it”. We must all vote continuously for the ideals we claim to support. That vote is our civic duty and the bare minimum as the conversations of our biases are necessities. Stand and Deliver.