Yes She Can

 

BREAKING: https://t.co/JQWy2gTfhs just dropped a new track titled "Yes She Can"—and yes, “She” is Kamala Harris.

This is the anthem America needs to hear right now. pic.twitter.com/8hX8fVEwLB

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) November 4, 2024

Maybe I just need to stay Kamala and carry Onala.  Maybe I just need to kick it like it's 2008. Maybe there's some sense out there, ready to throw water on the hate. I stay ready in crouch mode, but I want to believe we aren't too late. 

But this is all up to us not fate. I started voting from a place called hope. And the American Dream isn't done with any of us yet. 

And there are too many things we can never forget. 

Ready to turn the page, contain the rage, and never go back. 

We are not going back. 

The Survivor Tree

Sixteen years after the day, with violence and terror so much a part of our world, there is a hopeful and strong message in a living memorial, whose seedlings have been planted around the world.

Not Looking Away

I have to demur from the opinion of Michael Tomasky, whom I agree with regularly--but, well. I just don't think one actually abandons a whole bloc of states and still considers the possibility of having a national party. If the Democrats kiss off Florida and Texas, and don't even try to play their cards in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia et al, we set up to lose future rounds in those states also, because we don't have party infrastructure, we aren't cultivating voters, and we aren't delivering a meaningful message.

I guess I am pretty much at the "acceptance"  stage of grief where geographical party representation stands as it does because I think that, once we really codified "red" and "blue" states in the past decade or so? Multiple maps only reinforced the idea that red states necessarily concentrate in the South, and many people tend to accept broad generalizations. But I tend to look at what's possible, and I see possibilities.

I don't think it should sit well with people in the south that the fossil fuel industries are paying their employees less to accept more risk to eke out less cost-effective fuels, that spoil the land and way of life in the region for farmers and fishermen. I think there is a real reason for people to want to speak out about systems that protect people who poison water, and punish people who speak out about it. I think there isn't any room for equivocating that we believe there should be a strong border and clear rules about who gets to stay here, but industries have to do their part by hiring US citizens on a preferential basis. I think states need to look to fairer pay structures for a tide that rises all boats, and not continuously look for tax cuts that benefit elites and screw regular people.

I still think there is a number of common interests that truly Democratic politicians could speak to in the South, if they tried. I don't see it as a national party concern, necessarily, but if local politicians build it, I guess the national party should behoove itself to come.  So I think, to put it plainly, there's no benefit in cutting and running from a challenge--no matter how challenging it may seem. I suggested some avenues of opening up a legitimate "refreshed" dialog with southern states for Democratic candidates, but up-and-coming local politicians will probably know better than I what they're about. I just don't see giving up on them.

Malala Yousefzai Wins Nobel Prize

She is the youngest winner of the prize, and she's basically a boss. Her co-winner, Kailash Satyarthi, has helped save tens of thousands of children from a life of slavery and exploitation. His long-time advocacy against child labor in favor of children's education as a way out of poverty is complementary to Yousefzai's example. I think these choices are very fitting, because it needs to be understood that the best way to create a space for peace in the future is to make safe spaces for children to become the people they are meant to be--to know something about the world they will grow up to help create and to be free to make the best of it.

In a world where too many children are exposed to the horrors of war, abuse, and grinding poverty and labor, and are not well-enough exposed to a good education, sometimes not even good nutrition or basic sanitation,  I realize that the failure to give them a reasonable hope of a good future is what condemns them to a fearful life and people in developed nations to fear what they might become. Because even without a good education, children learn from what they see. If exposed to ignorance and hopelessness and superstition and hate--that's what they will know.

And that is what they will practice.

But the answer to combatting all that is so simple--books and pens and paper and attention and a dialog that gets opened up between a developing mind and everything that might be possible.  Here's to two very good examples of people working towards heading future generations in the right direction. You are doing it right.