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A tweet from the George Takei Twitter account which states:
"A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.
It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.
But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.
I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.
Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.
There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too."
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The last paragraph I find particularly powerful and something more people really should take into account.
See, that’s the issue, you’re thinking within the bounds of voting. There’s other stuff you can do, like community outreach, or talking to local politicians, or protesting. Real change in America was never won with a vote, it was fought for on the streets.
Who says I’m not doing that too?
Are you?
yes, regularly. I’m active in labor organizing, have walked picket lines with people who would go on to be US senators, make and give care packages to homeless people on the street and volunteer at my local food pantry. I’ve helped organize letter writing campaigns to get the tipped minimum wage raised and to get higher wages from the state for people who work in support services for adults with developmental challenges. I’ve flyered the parking lots of restaurants that were fighting the unemployment claim of a pregnant woman they fired without cause in an effort to pressure them to drop the case. I’ve protested outside town halls and other political events like that since 2001. I don’t owe you my bona fides at all, but here they are. The idea that you can’t be a good progressive unless you abandon the only meaningful resistance available against someone who is openly trying to dismantle democracy is simply horseshit. Trump played this same game against Clinton in 2016 and it worked. He actively campaigned for people who might have voted for her to stay home. “she’s not a real progressive”, “they’re all the same anyway”, “she’s got this in the bag”, etc. I absolutely DO NOT volunteer myself and my family to be sacrificed to some twitter communist’s ideological purity test. You do the job that’s in front of you, and the job that’s in front of us right now is preventing another Trump presidency. Don’t be a fucking Republican psyop.
Hell yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! Preach! This is the fire!