This is not going to be a pretty or inspiring post. This is my explanation of why I have become so politically active in recent years, and it is my prayer that heroes step up to save our society.
The world is in trouble. BIG trouble. Conservatives continue to deny or ignore climate change in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence. The top 1% keeps getting wealthier and will do anything to make more money, including polluting our world with pesticides and chemicals. Our bees are dying off, monarch butterflies are disappearing. Multigendered fish and aquatic life are showing up in our rivers. Land formerly used for agriculture has been poisoned with toxic runoff, so badly that it will remain barren for eternity. The ocean is full of plastic of all sizes (including nano) that has been entered into the food chain, causing endocrine changes in all of us once we eat the seafood. Aquatic birds are dying in huge numbers because they have too much plastic in their guts and they can't vomit it up. Mountaintops have been seared off in a search for more coal, leaving coal slurry and putris that is poisoning the surrounding environment and killing people who have nowhere else to go. Although it has been scientifically proven that chemicals like the glyphosate in Roundup causes kidney disease and other illnesses, companies like Monsanto (that are implicitly aided by our government) continue to push it on us and are now genetically modifying plants so that the substance is inserted directly into the DNA of the plant, while we are not allowed to see a label that lets us know we are eating toxins. In spite of the fact that water is predicted to "be the next oil" because it is growing scarce in an ever-warming climate (observe California's current predicament), the fracking industry continues to use up to eight million gallons of fresh water PER WELL. Once contaminated, the water can never be made drinkable again. And that does not even address the problem of the fracking byproducts and methane which pollutes our atmosphere, land and rivers. Yet more wells appear on our blighted landscape every day, and Obama touts fracking as our best hope for energy. Our earth is being sucked dry to the point of sink-ins and earthquakes that are occurring on an alarming scale. Our education system is being sold off piece by piece to for-profit corporations who care nothing about creating the intelligent and critically thinking population that we need in order to survive. We are creating a generation who knows how to bubble in a test, but has been slighted on the joy of learning and thinking.
Clearly, we're in some trouble, and we need heroes to step up. I am looking to the progressives for sanity -- people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Zephyr Teachout. They speak out against corruption in government. They fight the belief that profit is everything. They know that whether you are a student saddled by an insane amount of school debt, or a struggling worker who does not get paid enough to cover their living expenses, the right thing is to fight for them and right the inequality. They see the need to move our country to an economy built on renewable energy and small businesses. Their predominant goal is to make sure that all of us have a voice, and that those voices are heard. We need true representatives who care about our health, our finances, and our lives. The progressive era in the early 1900's ushered in all of those things we have held dear in the century that has passed - things like workers' compensation, shorter work hours, food and drug safety, meat inspections, the end of child labor in factories, and social security. We can do the same now. Let's help make progressive change happen in our society by supporting those who stand up for progressive ideals.
For today, the Democratic primary in New York, I am voting for Teachout for Governor and Wu for Lieutenant Governor. I'm hoping for a miracle, If it does not happen today, we can't give up. We will need our heroes more than ever.
