23 Aug Getting Charged Up for Fall
As the summer’s light begins to wane, and the nights take on a fresh chill, I feel a thrill of exhilaration. Fall has always been my favorite season, a time when I get really focused. And with a full schedule of workshops coming up, I get busy as well.
But fall also brings us toward the mid term elections, where it’s time for Americans to get really focused as well. Regardless of what you consider real or fake news, the media keeps us both taunted and distracted. The insult in the president’s latest tweet is not the issue. The future of humanity and the fate of our nation is.
Climate change alone threatens the very future of civilization. Just this summer, over a million people were displaced by floods in India, more than 5,000 fires burned in California, and over 71,000 people in Japan were hospitalized due to heat stroke through early August. And this is just the beginning, as the effects of the climate crisis increase exponentially year by year.
But climate isn’t the only crisis. We are also having a crisis of values, where money trumps doing the right thing, where lies are seen as truth, and blatant corruption plays victim to legitimate investigation.
What kind of nation do we want to be? Having lived at a time when humans have had more privilege and ease than ever before (yes, believe it or not, even the poor are better off than the poor of days past), we don’t seem to have woken up to a true benevolence. We’ve fought for, and been given personal rights, but it hasn’t been coupled with responsibility. Perhaps a little crisis is just what we need to really wake up to the fact that the future is in our hands.
But if we wake up in time, maybe we can mitigate the crisis rather than exacerbate it.
This fall, do what you can to help get out the vote, to ensure just voting practices, and support the values you really want to see in this world. If each of us gets three other people to vote, and they each get three other people, who in turn get three others, etc. we may actually offset gerrymandering, voter suppression, Russian interference, and hear the real voice of the people of this country.
In the paraphrased words of various people from Alexander Hamilton to Irene Dunne to Malcolm X: “If we don’t take a stand for something, we will fall for anything.”
Here are a few places that are working on protecting and registering voters, where you can volunteer, donate, or pass information on to others. Do what you can.
Ten More Votes (campaign app)
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