This Week's Opening Thought: November 7, 2022

This week's opening thought, especially for those with power, privilege, and positionality in the United States: Vote.

Take the time to understand the measures and politicians in your area that could harm Global Majority and marginalized communities and vote against them.

If you haven't gleaned anything else from this country's past few election cycles, you have hopefully learned that your vote has legitimate weight. Making informed decisions that factor in human and environmental impact has weight. Voting not just for yourself and your best interests based on your class and socioeconomic status but as a voice for others who have been oppressed and harmed for centuries has weight.

I don't have any fancy slogans or stickers to motivate you to vote and care about your community and communities that are your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I'm operating on the hope that you'll learn from history and respond accordingly, a hope full of swiss cheese-sized holes that I cling onto because the alternative is depressing. I'm expecting y'all to be decent citizens, to be the "good people" y'all claim to be. I'm hoping that some of y'all will live up to those "good white people" personas some of y'all gleefully tote around and vote outside of your ego and wants. I hope many of you will do better than using voting as a social media gold sticker participation award selfie. I hope you'll vote with empathy instead of for likes and retweets.

Hope.

There's that word again.

Hope is all many people in this country have left to hold on to. And some of y'all don't realize how your vote has eroded the hopes of so many.

I want to believe that people can be better than the images they show me daily. I need to think people can be better because, well, hope. Even with it in tatters, I wear it like a blanket against the elements.

I'm not the only one.

Vote like there will be no hope left to hold onto.

Because there might not be.