We will persist
We come to the final stretch of this election cycle. We have registered ourselves and helped others register to vote. We have followed through with absentee ballots, voting early in person, and making plans for casting our ballots. We’ve talked with friends, colleagues, and family members about voting. Our local Democratic Party of Gordon County has placed signs around the county to show our support.
Unfortunately, many of those signs recently went missing, disappearing in the middle of the night. Within a couple of days, our local party leadership distributed more signs throughout the county, but not without ridicule, including yelling, cursing and worse in some cases. This type of story has been reported beyond the lines of Gordon County and our state of Georgia. Whatever the intention behind such cowardice and vitriol, the temptation may be to succumb to despair. We may want to hide or be less vocal. Instead, we will persist.
We have recently learned that the current administration committed a heinous crime against humanity by losing track of parents whom they separated from their children in their callous “zero tolerance” policy against immigrant families.
Through this story, we have been reminded of the horrors inside these camps: the cramped conditions, the deaths, the unwanted surgeries, the cries of children calling out for their parents.
Though others turn away, we remember, and for these broken families, we will persist.
We have lost family members, friends, beloved members of our Calhoun community, and neighbors to COVID-19. Some of us have been sickened with lasting effects of “long COVID,” and damage to vital organs.
We have watched the president of the United States respond with stoicism and distrust toward medical experts rather than empathy for the American people.
His hubris and refusal to respond adequately has brought calamity. For those of us who are sick and those we have lost, we will persist.
This pandemic has stolen graduations, first days of Kindergarten, birthdays, visits with grandparents, and business from entrepreneurs and small business owners. For the sake of a return to a semblance of normalcy and listening to science so we can overcome this, we will persist.
We democrats and others who support Joe Biden love this country. We want to see America thrive and be the fair and just nation captured in the words of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. We hold our nation and leaders accountable to despicable acts and call for more responsibility and wrongs to be made right. Saying this is anti-American is like scolding a parent for holding their child responsible to do better. Because of our love of the country and our vision for a more perfect union, we will persist.
The debates and messaging coming across our screens and in our ears provide a juxtaposition that brings clarity and demonstrates the stark differences between the parties and candidates. My late grandfather, who was a Pentecostal pastor, often quoted the scripture, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” We have a current president who has used his voice to misinform, sew discord and distrust, bully his opponents, denigrate women and young girls, make fun of those with illnesses and disabilities, stir up white supremacy, suggest immigrants are criminals, insult our veterans and prisoners of war, and blatantly lie in an attempt to gaslight us all. Yet many evangelicals tend to excuse or dismiss this behavior. Nevertheless, we will persist.
A 2018 video of Joe Biden recently resurfaced. In this video, he is speaking with victims’ families from the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas tragedy when a young boy runs up and hugs him, the son of a fallen coach who died protecting his students.
I cried as I watched Joe embrace him and kiss him on the top of the head as a father would.
He asked him if he was OK. He listened. He stayed.
Joe has used his messaging and platform to call for unity, to inform us of plans to help bring us back better, to bring us together to fight the challenges before us rather than each other. We have before us the great opportunity to have a president who promises to be a president for all of America.
To help bring this opportunity into reality, we will persist.
We must take care of ourselves, hold on to hope, remember our values when we vote, do the hard work of justice at the polls and in the community, and if we persist, even beyond this election cycle, I believe we will win.