Growing up in a Canadian family in the United States, it was never really in my blood to be political in any way. My parents have never been able to vote in this country, so the conversation didn’t come up much. A lot of the issues I would hear being discussed in the media during elections never seemed to be anything that could affect my family, a white family, living in an affluent, liberal town, with parents who owned businesses, and paid taxes.
Soon after Bush’s reelection, when I was 14, I watched my dad drive away from our home I’d grown up in, to renew his visa in Canada, with the plan to return a day later. I came home from school that afternoon to find out that my father was no longer allowed in the country his children were born in, the country he had created a life in. The moment you find yourself on the floor crying with your mom and sister, you realize how quickly the government can affect your life.
This post isn’t as much for Trump supporters as it is for those who are undecided, or the “Bernie or Bust” voters. I voted for Bernie in the primaries, because I believe in what he stands for, but at the same time, I understand the fact that he doesn’t play the game to actually get things done. If you want the change that Bernie promotes, do you honestly think that not voting Hillary will get you those changes? I can agree that the system needs some help, but don’t cast a protest vote, because in the end, who are you really hurting? Yourself, your family, and your friends, not the politicians. Hillary isn’t the lesser of two evils, as far as I’ve found, she’s not evil, she just knows how to play the game to get things done.
From my own experience, I know that deportations don’t happen to only illegal immigrants, as the general population might think, they happen to my dad, my family. I know how broken the medical insurance system was before Obama’s Affordable Care Act, because my family paid over 50 percent of their income to insurance because of my preexisting condition since I was four with no say in their coverage or cost. I know that my rights as a female and my right to choose is under attack. Think about the issues that actually affect you and those around you when you vote. Does a bunch of deleted emails affect your future? As lovely as it would be to not be bound by a two party system, we have to learn how to play the game before we can change it. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but voting third party is a wasted vote. If you’re not voting for “nasty Hillary” in order to soothe your conscious, take a moment to think how your conscious would feel with President Trump? And if you are voting for Trump, take a moment to know that you will be the reason families go bankrupt, the economy will fall, our national security will be at risk, climate change will get exponentially worse, women will lose all rights to choose, and my dad could very well be deported again.
In 2012, I was the only one in my family with the ability to vote. This year, my sister shares that responsibility with me. We take it very seriously because it doesn’t only affect us, but also our parents who created a life for themselves and their two daughters. They have educated us and helped us thrive in this country, and we don’t plan on letting their sacrifice go to waste.
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HRVHS graduate Kesia Barone lives in Portland and works as an architect. Her parents are Jacquie and Pasquale Barone of Hood River.
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