These Three Things

As I spend more time in the social justice arena I’ve come to the conclusion that there are three areas I need to focus on in order to make real change.

1. Gerrymandering
2. Voting rights
3. Raise the minimum wage

Almost any societal problem we face resides under the umbrella of one of these three domains. As a country, we have so many problems it can be overwhelming to me to try to figure out where to focus my efforts. Nothing will cause me to quit trying as quickly as finding out what I’ve been doing isn’t effective and feels like a waste of time. This isn’t to say that anything beyond these three things doesn’t matter. In fact, it all matters and that’s what makes this so hard. I have to tell myself that I’m going to focus on these areas and other people are fighting in other areas. We have to work smarter, not harder.

For me, what makes these three things different is that as long as we continue to exist under the oppressive outcomes that are the result of these policies then we as a country are most easily and efficiently controlled. These three things are like the topic sentences and everything else falls beneath them. If these three things can be disrupted then we can really affect change in all of the other crucial areas. These three things are the structural underpinning of our entire system. We have to break the system to seed the change that must happen.

These three things seem so superficially harmless, especially if you don’t know too much about them. How can anything bad come from just dividing up areas to make counting votes easier? How on earth would putting simple rules in place that we all have to follow put someone at risk of losing their lawfully given right to vote? We’ve already got an established minimum wage, isn’t that enough? If it’s not enough because you live beyond your means, well, that sounds like a “you problem”. Maybe you should get an education, or stop having babies you can’t afford, or get a better job, or another job. But why is that society’s problem to fix?

 But they are so insidious and the thought that goes into each of them for how to whittle away the rights of the people is appalling. But we’re kept so busy and stressed out that we don’t have time to delve deeply into what’s really happening. And so we just keep mindlessly acquiescing and passing our autonomy over to someone we assume has our best interests at heart because we don’t have time to untangle the truth.

What really scares me is that I believe many of us who were spurred to action when Trump was elected have relaxed with Biden in office. We cannot let our guard down and let our fight fizzle out. This is a critical time where somewhere in the not too distant future this period will be studied and a judgment will be passed on whether we did the right thing or the wrong thing for society.

Biden is a centrist and exhorts unity. He seemingly is a nice man with typical white man flaws that he’s been allowed to get away with because of his reputation of being a nice man. The logic is circular and self-affirming. White men get a pass that other men don’t. I voted for Biden in the presidential election, but I was very much an “Okay, fine, Biden” voter. I want progressive candidates who push for progressive change when they’re in office. If they drop the ball then I want to vote them out and replace them with someone who will do the work we sent them to do. If we continue to relax into the savior Biden saving us all we are laying the groundwork for another Trump in 2024. We are doing their work for them. The time has come to stop mindlessly handing over our power in the mistaken belief that someone out there has our back. We must have our own backs.