As I write this, I balk at using the title “president.” Technically you hold this title, Donald, though you are anything BUT presidential.
I heard on NPR and in the local papers that you are coming to Rochester, Minnesota for a rally on Friday.
Why?
We do not support you. Please stand down, and stay away from our state.
The irony is not lost on us that you are visiting Rochester, the home of the Mayo Clinic, where outstanding medical professionals and scientists provide outstanding care to patients, while contributing to the advancement of science.
Scientists…you scoffed at a recent rally. Joe Biden will listen to the scientists, whom you have mocked repeatedly.
You are a disgraceful person, and you are not a leader. Your casual disdain for the health of Americans disqualifies you for this role. Science has saved your life, and yet you discredit it.
When you fail to protect the citizens to whom you have sworn an oath, you fail our nation. When your presence in our communities becomes a threat to public health, you must stand down.
Mayor Kim Norton of Rochester has expressed her concern about your visit, noting that the communities and states around the area are currently a hotbed for COVID and that your campaign will be bussing people in. This is irresponsible and reflects a disdain for health and for life.
The bulk of the COVID cases in the community of Bemidji in October were directly traced to your campaign rally in September. Your failure to take this illness seriously endangers all health care workers serving our communities.
We are so eager to send you home, Donald. You exhaust us. You anger us. You sow destruction and anxiety in the places you visit.
Minnesotans will speak loudly and clearly at the polls. I certainly hope you will keep your pledge not to visit the states where you have lost. If you never visit us again, it will be too soon.
I watched the final debate on Thursday night, and I can’t resist a few comments.
You know that would happen, didn’t you? I am a feminista, and a woman who believes in racial justice and equity for all.
I want to encourage you to vote early if you can in Minnesota. This is an option for us, and because we are in a pandemic, extending the ability cast ballots safely is an important consideration.
I want to ask you to consider, no matter what party you are in, please VOTE. You know which way I am voting. I can’t hide it. I vote pro-choice, pro-woman, pro-family.
This 4-button pack is available at the Team Joe website. I’m partial to the Kamala shirt. Anything you can do to help would be appreciated, I am sure.
The harasser in chief has called Mexicans rapists and drug dealers (and some of them are good people, he conceded). I’ll let you guess which one I am.
I am a Mexican American woman. Women are shouldering a much higher burden during this pandemic. Latina women are facing unprecedented levels of job loss.
This pandemic is not showing any signs of slowing in this country. In fact, the infection rates are spiking in many states. Our economy needs support, and the President is intent on getting a Supreme Court nominee in place rather than committing to helping the American people.
This 4-year nightmare needs to end. It is bad enough that this presidency continues into January, even if the American people win in November. And he must be defeated. Biden has the good sense to steer us into better days. His experience, empathy and judgment have never been more crucial.
The ultimate “mute” button for those of us who are tired a constant stream of lies is to vote for Joe Biden.
It did not have to happen this way. But a lack of competent leadership will do that. The U.S. has about a quarter of the worldwide COVID-19 cases. This puts “we’re number one” in a new light, no?
Don’t do it for yourself. Masks are not worn to protect you. Masks are worn to protect your community from small micro droplets that are released when you talk, cough or sneeze.
They don’t protect people completely, but they do slow the spread. And the main reason we want to slow the spread is so that hospitals are able to deal with the influx of cases. Also, maybe some of us care about human life and dignity.
My sister is a nurse. I don’t want her to have to deal with the results (y)our carelessness. Rural hospitals do not have the supplies that leaders claimed they would have. They must reuse the supplies they have. This is not a good situation.
Humans have difficulty with exponents. We think in linear ways, so these “hockey stick” curves work are not easily grasped. We saw this with the last big recession in 2008-2009. One minute it seemed things were fine: everyone was making money on flipping houses. And the next minute: financial disaster. Some saw the signs and warned us. But most people partied until they got laid off.
I get it. Or I try to be patient anyway.
Things don’t become serious until they are, well, SERIOUS.
With nearly 14 million cases as of this writing, and almost 600,000 deaths so far attributed to this virus, one might think we could get a clue.
I know this is a rant.
I try to be more measured than this most days. My anger and disgust at the self-centered behavior I keep seeing, particularly in national leadership, is usually something I control. I’m a yoga teacher, for cripes sake. I meditate daily.
And yet.
My rage at incompetent leaders. Cannot. Be. Contained.Some days.
Wear your mask, wash your hands, keep your distances when possible.
Your community thanks you for thinking beyond yourself.
Actually that’s the only time there is, this present moment. The past exists in your mind as memory. The future only exists in your imagination.
Times like these make that all the more clear to me. The only actions we can take are in the present.
True, we can plan for the future. But our ideas about the future are only a guess. In February, did anyone plan for not being able to get to the gym for a month starting March 17th?
I had to laugh at the U.S. President’s remarks on Wednesday. (Otherwise I would cry. Really.) He’s acting like we can and should “start-up” the economy again just like re-booting a computer. He actually thinks he is in control of the virus and the economy! Wow.
You and I know that is absurd and dangerous. It becomes all the more clear that when the ego (i.e. left-brained “me-oriented” mental chatter) drives the world, disaster is the result.
Surrender to this moment. Do only the next relevant thing.
The next moment will take care of itself. And you will calm yourself by breathing, not trying to imagine EVERY possible scenario at once.
Think of Dorothy, who said “there’s no place like home.” And close your eyes, feel your feet on the floor, or your butt in a chair and say:
“There’s no time like the present.” Then live your life, one moment, and one breath at a time. Humanity is resilient. You are no exception.
Next year on August 18th the U.S. will celebrate 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment of the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. A couple of Western states had given women the right to vote already in 1910. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the turn of the 19th century.
I have socks with Lucretia Mott‘s likeness, which I wore with pride on election day this year.
It is hard for me to imagine the changes in democratic consciousness that have taken place in the last 100 years. Generations of women and men began to understand that true democracy could not exist until more people could exercise their right to representation.
Granted, some people probably wish we had gone back to a world where men were in charge and women were property. I don’t tend to hang out with people like that for obvious reasons.
I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next year with various candidates. I’m hoping we winnow down to less than 5 options by February caucus season. I would like to follow election politics but right now it’s hard to take any candidate too seriously. Unfortunately we do not regulate campaign spending very well in this country. So the people who raise the most money tend to dominate the airwaves.
Given the shock and trauma of the election 3 years ago, and the disastrous result of electing someone who has openly bragging about assaulting women, I am ready to help with GOTV efforts. Let’s make it a celebration! 100 years – can we imagine some new leadership? I say YES WE CAN!
I realized recently that I grew up on the poor side of town. I did not grow up poor, mind you. I grew up with lots of love, a wonderful family and in a safe neighborhood in a small town. But I always thought of our lifestyle as “middle class.”
My family always had enough to eat, we never went without any basic necessities, clothing, health care or even luxuries like television and eventually a microwave. My sis and I shared a bedroom until I moved to the basement in high school so I could wake up earlier to run in the early pre-dawn hours.
But social class and income class are not the same thing. Both my parents had college degrees. Mom chose to stay home and raise her daughters until we were in middle and high school, when she went back to work part-time, as a substitute teacher. I just assumed that meant we were middle class.
My Dad was a teacher and a leader in the local community. All of the parents of the students he taught in the bilingual program treated him as a respected professional in our small town. Of course, some administrators and teachers were not as respectful. He had his share of good principals and a few racist.
Recently my mother-in-law called herself “working class.” I was shocked. She has a master’s degree and she and her husband bought and sold homes together a few times during their history. So I always considered her middle class. But she considered herself working class. Probably it was more about her upbringing (to her) than any type of income category.
In contrast, my parents never bought a home. Not quite enough income from a teacher’s salary. We had the advantage of summers at Grandma’s house in Bemidji. So we did not go without space to enjoy ourselves in the summer, on a lake in Minnesota, no less. It was a long drive from Southern Wisconsin, but we had the picnic lunches that my Mom made, and there were rest areas for potty breaks. It was a blessing for us. We read books all, swam in the lake nearly every day, and there was plenty of introvert re-charge time.
By income standards, we probably would have been considered working class, or perhaps slightly less. In comparison to families with two working parents, mine were certainly not as well-off financially. But I always had what I needed. I always had a couple of new school outfits to start the year. There were a lot of farm kids in my school, so all of us had pretty similar income, or so I imagined.
I relied heavily on need-based financial aid for a private college, but being 2nd in my class in high school, I qualified for it. I won’t say I didn’t work hard for that. It may have helped that my name belied my half-Mexican origin. But I was born in Wisconsin, not Juarez. Therein, by the grace of god, lies the difference.
Why was I born here? Because my Mom fell in love with her guitar teacher when she studied in Mexico. And he fell in love with a Minnesotan woman, despite her mother serving as a chaperone on most of their dates. Why did I have the opportunities I have today? Because my family worked hard, and made sacrifices for me, so I could grow up healthy and happy.
I started thinking about people who use racism and class-ism to divide people. Take ahem… our Harasser-in-Chief. No matter how much money he makes, or pretends to make, he will always have NO class.
You know why? Because class, true class, is about how you treat people. It is about your character.
My father always treated the cooks and the janitors in his school as respectfully as he treated the other teachers. I learned to treat people as equals, not as superior or inferior due to their education or social status. I am really proud that both my Mom and Dad taught me that the measure of a good person is in how kindly you treat others.
To be a classy person is to realize that it is not about what you have, or what you do. There is honor in ALL work, and there is compassion for those who may not have work right now. There is a belief that ALL people are worthy of human dignity, no matter their skin color, creed, religion, or national origin. America was founded on these principles, that all people were created equal, which is why I am still proud to call this home.
mexi minnesotana 