Not. A. Cult.
It’s a love fest/AP Photo
From HuffPo (by America Ferrera): There is a view, often expressed on my social media feeds, which maintains that I am voting for Hillary Clinton because I’m a stupid, uninformed, misguided feminist who only knows how to vote with her ignorant vagina. While this may be possible, I’d like to entertain some other potential reasons for my support of Hillary.
I am a first-generation American, millennial, female voter and I’m not only voting for Hillary Clinton, but I also really like Hillary Clinton. She’s the kind of woman I’d share a bottle of wine with. Maybe this is my vagina’s fault, but maybe I really heart Hillary because I was raised by a single mother who woke up everyday and did the unglamorous and grueling work of providing for her six children. Maybe that’s part of why I’ve come to recognize and admire Hillary for showing up, day in and day out, for the promise of unsexy, slow-going and hard-won progress.
I’d like to literally stream Netflix and chill with Hillary. (FYI: Per the Urban Dictionary, “Netflix and chill” is code for you are going to go over to your partners house and f**k with Netflix in the background.) Seriously, I’d be down to snuggle in onesies with a pint of mint chocolate chip and do a Gilmore Girls binge with Secretary Clinton. Maybe that’s because I’m an American-Latina who’s experienced first hand the inequities that so many children and families in underserved communities face in our country. (FYI: Ferrera is worth approximately $8 million.) Inequities that Hillary has spent her entire career trying to understand and rectify.
Even before the Latino vote was crucial to elections, Hillary held the first ever White House convening on Hispanic youth as First Lady. She’s fought for early childhood education so that a kid like me, growing up in the public school system, doesn’t fall behind before she even gets the chance to begin. She’s defended school lunch programs so that a kid like me, dependent on those programs for her mid-day meal, doesn’t sit distracted by hunger pangs as she tries to focus on her math problems.
Maybe Hillary’s my kind of bad-ass because she wastes no time licking wounds. When she lost the presidential nomination to Obama in ‘08, she immediately urged her supporters to back him with grace and without reservation. When President Obama called her to serve his administration as Secretary of State, she answered.
Even further back, when her push for healthcare reform failed in 1994, she didn’t run and hide in shame or wallow in defeat. She got right back to working with Democrats and Republicans to bring healthcare to 8 million uninsured children through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, so that a mother like mine, raising 6 kids on a single income, didn’t have to choose between a trip to the doctor’s office with one sick kid or a week’s worth of groceries for the whole family.
I can think of no better definition for a bad-ass than this: one who, in the face of failure and ridicule, remains undeterred from her mission to make children’s lives better. (Does that include the children of Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith?)
Maybe Hillary’s my candidate because as a longtime ally in the battle for comprehensive immigration reform, she co-sponsored Ted Kennedy’s immigration reform bill — a bill Bernie Sanders voted against in 2007. He claims the bill would have created a second class in this country, but I’m not buying this excuse in light of the harsh reality that there already exists a second class in this country. It is made up of hard working immigrants of all ethnicities who largely contribute to our society, yet their undocumented status allows others to exploit them through a host of methods from wage theft and sexual assault, to being denied bottled water in Flint, Michigan. (You want to talk about exploitation? Have a conversation with Kate Steinle’s family.)
An illegal exploited the system and killed Kate Steinle
Undocumented people in this country are willing to do back breaking jobs under no protection and with no recourse so that their children might have a better future. While our inadequate immigration system has been turned into a hyper-politicized topic, a humanitarian crisis is growing in this country, a crisis that our 21st Century policy should be sophisticated enough to address.
Maybe I’m voting for Hillary because I’m beyond ready for a president who is capable of working with both Republicans and Democrats to find common ground. I’m ready for a president who will finally push through immigration reform that will boost our economy, recognize the humanity of the 11 million undocumented people in this country, and remind us that every single non-Native American family in this country came here with hope for a better life.
That hope is not inherently illegal or criminal — it is called the American Dream.
And while all this is true, Hillary knows that Latinos are not single issue voters. Our families didn’t come to this country to solve the immigration reform problem: they came to thrive. They came to get educated, to start businesses and to contribute. From access to healthcare and higher education, to reproductive rights and support for small business owners- Hillary has made real and steady progress on these issues which greatly impact our communities.
I am fully aware that “real and steady progress” is not the most inspiring of battle cries — especially in the face of those calling for revolution — but let us not forget that many of our families fled countries where dismantled systems made room for violence and tyranny. I don’t think we need a revolution in this country; I think we need an evolution in this country. And evolution is slow and steady.
Read the rest of her love fest here.
h/t Weasel Zippers
DCG
