The last few weeks have been heartbreaking.
We are living in a supercharged atmosphere of fear and hatred, fanned by the political campaign rhetoric of rage, lies and distortion. Jews are murdered while worshipping in their synagogue. African Americans are murdered while getting their groceries. People are fearful for their safety — at the voting booths.
This is not the America we love.
As for the work we do every single day at Moms Clean Air Force: This administration, from the president to his EPA, chooses to ignore the clanging alarm bells warning of climate peril. Warning of peril to human civilization. Every clean air protection we value is being stripped away — to protect polluter profits.
This is not the America we love.
So where’s the hope? Every single day, we mothers, fathers, and friends to children roll up our sleeves and fight again. We fight for climate safety. We fight to protect our beloveds. We fight so that voices of love, of civility, of reason, will not be silenced by hate and anger. We fight to ensure our children grow up in better world than the one we are showing them today.
So much fighting. It would be a balm indeed to gather at the table and make rational decisions to protect our futures. It would be balm indeed to hear the voices of our leaders comfort and calm rather than rile and rage. It would be balm indeed to watch elected officials lead us to safety, rather than into danger. Hope is that balm and we can apply it by voting.
President Abraham Lincoln once said, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Right now, hope does glimmer across the country, among people who are fighting to protect “the better angels of our nature,” as Lincoln so eloquently put it. We cannot let their voices — our voices — get drowned out by fury.
The most consequential thing you can do now is to vote.
Vote for the sake of a better, stronger, more loving America.
Vote for the sake of hope.
Vote for the sake of our better angels.