Dear America,
We all know Trump’s only campaign tactic is to stop people voting. He doesn’t want you to vote, because he knows that if you do, he will lose. He won four years ago because people that didn’t like Trump and didn’t like Clinton, stayed at home. You cannot afford to stay at home, this is a referendum on coronavirus, a referendum on fascism. In what follows I have argued a few more reasons why you should vote.
Race and gender equality are intertwined. We cannot have one without the other. Until we have both, we will never avert a crisis. From the climate emergency to poverty. Women and racial equality are fundamental to everything, and Donald Trump is actively fighting against both. But there is a solution, one way to speed up the fight for equality. You can vote him out on Wednesday, that is if you turn up to the ballot box. So vote.
“There is nothing more basic a right, than owning your own body” were the words painted on Sadia Abdi’s placard at one of the many anti-Trump marches organised since 2016 – the year of Brexit and Trump. The fact of the matter is Trump does not want all Americans to have the autonomous right to their own body. Not because he believes it is morally right to deny women a choice, but because he is relying on the ‘housewives of the deep south’ to vote for him again, knowing they are ‘pro-life’. He is willing to risk women’s lives for the sake of votes. Knowing full well that making abortion illegal results in back alley terminations. You have the chance to protect your basic right to your own body on Wednesday. So, Vote.
Here is a man, who stands before us; an orange coated, gluttonous caricature who thrives off other people’s suffering – standing in allyship with white supremacist extremists. He will put your lives in danger. He has put your life in danger. His words have been a catalyst for terrorism, murder and the rise in hate crime. This rise in white supremacist extremism has not been given this much airtime time since Nazi Germany. And we cannot accept it. Our silence is acceptance. So, Vote.
And if you have felt lost, and powerless these past four years, you are not alone. Many of us here in the UK feel lost too. We don’t feel represented. Our politicians resemble animated cameos in their own show – as opposed to real people who actually care about social issues, and the economy. Us young people didn’t vote for Brexit, we voted to Remain in the EU because we want opportunity. I stand by the belief that the majority of us want to work together and cooperate in order to never again repeat the mistakes of the past.
To all the young people in the US, you have a second chance, you can vote him out, but to do so, you must turn up. There is too much at stake not to. So, Vote.
At a time of a global pandemic Trump will let your world rot while his hands are dipped in dried up oil rigs, and his pockets full of “power”, indifferent to your suffering, so long as he survives another term. Believing – whole-heartedly – that he is the leader of the “free world”. Yet, we know that nothing in Trump’s America is free. From health to education. He’ll make you pay. So, Vote.
By voting him out, you are saying NO to fascism, NO to racism, NO to xenophobia, NO to misogyny and sexism, NO to climate change denial. By voting him out you can say YES to a new chapter, YES to change and YES to a politics which can be effectively scrutinised. So, Vote.
Biden is by no means ‘the solution’ but by abstaining your vote or voting for Trump there can be no glossing round the edges, people will suffer. So, vote.
Trump’s promises to the mining country are empty, he will not help anyone. Republicans do not act in the interest of the average American worker, they act in the interest of big capitalism, car companies and the immediate short term, with no thought to the future and the planet we live on. So, Vote.
No doubt about it, this is an election on Trump and the “isms” he epitomises. This is an election on white supremacy vs everyone else. So, Vote.
Trump, Bolsanaro, Nigel Farage, Orban, Erdogan, they all thrive off of our suffering. And now you have a chance to break the chain by getting your ass, dog, wheelchair, daughter, mother, father, great grandmother, all your mates – face masks and all – to the ballot box. So, Vote.
And just remember this. Whatever the result on Thursday, no one, not even a big orange wotsit chauvinist can dim the light of hope. The next generation will make sure no one like him will ever have power again. Far-right-wing populism and the patriarchy are on its way out, and we know before something leaves it doesn’t go quietly. But we can speed up their exit, so vote.
Vote. Because Trump doesn’t want you to.
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