I wanted to write a long, sad diary yesterday about how since I graduated high school in 1997, I have spent my adult life living through one crisis after another:
- Columbine
- The sham election of George W. Bush
- 9/11
- The Iraq War
- The f***ing re-election of George W. Bush (by popular vote!)
- The Great Recession
- Trump 2.1
- COVID
- Soon to come: The f***ing re-election of Trump.
But I’m not.
I don’t have the luxury of being sad or feeling despair. Unlike the first five crises I listed above when I was a young man and had nothing to lose, I now have my family and community to fight for. My wife and I had our (now 10 year-old) daughter during the halcyon days of Obama’s latter presidency, and our (now 7 year-old) son during the darker days of Trump’s first term. My daughter started helping me canvas during the 2022 midterms and I got to celebrate one amazing political victory with her. I’ve been teaching her ever since then about the value of having people in office who run because they care about people, versus people who run for power’s sake. I want her to see the value in perseverance.
I’m going to keep going.
I’m going to keep on focusing locally where I live and making the change that I have the power to make. My state did not become a blue trifecta in 2022 because people sat on their hands. It happened because people organized and came together.
I’ll write diaries here and there for the next four years with the goal of marking down the small wins where I live. From 2018 until 2022, most politicians trying to be like Trump have lost here in Michigan. The 2024 election got us Elissa Slotkin as Senator, Kyra Harris-Bolden and Kimberly Ann Thomas on the Michigan Supreme Court, and my friend Natalie Price also kept her house seat! Those are not insignificant wins, and we got them because we worked hard this election cycle.
We will fight, and we will win. One neighborhood, one township, one city, one county and one state at a time.
