Why I Vote

D. S. Mitchell

I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I graduated from Lincoln High School in 1964. I am a white female. I grew up in poverty. Both my mother and father were union members. They divorced when I was a teen.

But I was blessed. Everybody said I was smart. So when I graduated from high school I headed to college. I, like many others of my generation, was the first person in my family to graduate from college.

With the help of several great scholarships, I received my BS in Social Science/Political Science in 1972 from Portland State University. Not a particularly useful degree, in itself. My original intent had been to continue to law school, but my full-time job, parenting, and physical exhaustion, halted my education at that time. Ten years later, in 1982, I returned to Clark Community College and obtained an Associate Degree in Nursing. After graduation with my ADA, I worked for the next 33 years as a Registered Nurse in hospitals in Oregon, Washington, California and Nevada. I still keep up my RN license, and do volunteer work.

I have never missed voting in an election since I came of voting age. My mother called herself a “Roosevelt Democrat”. I am a passionate progressive in the vein of Bernie Sanders. I believe in political activism. If you have a political agenda, which we all do, it is necessary to speak up.

It amazes me to hear people say they, “hate government intervention in their lives.”

“What is it you don’t like,” I ask? “Good roads, mail delivery, clean water, safe medications, public transportation, bank regulators, your social security check? Because, that’s what government is, and does.”

My political activities before starting this progressive political blog were limited. I helped a friend with his losing campaign for Mayor of Portland in 1980. I also volunteered for another friend win his seat in the Oregon State Senate in 1984. In 2018 I was an activist, organizer for John Orr, in his losing run for Oregon Dist. #32 State Representative. Other than those efforts, I have silently lived my life, and my biggest contribution to politics was to consistently and religiously, vote for progressives.

So, why am I now a vocal activist at 72 years of age? Why am I screaming from the roof tops? Why am I going to Town Hall Meetings to talk to my elected officials? Why am I writing and calling and emailing my elected officials? Why am I fighting with my relatives? Why have I started writing a political blog? If you have watched TV, read the newspaper, checked the internet, talked to your friends, are a living breathing human being, you know why. Donald J. Trump, Mike Pence, and their wrecking crew of Republican confederates in the Congress, most pointedly Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.

I have become so disturbed by the unfolding events I feel I must speak out. I urge everyone who feels the pain of the 2016 election, to RESIST the backward-looking “make America great, again” crowd and turn your sights on 2018, and bring this country back on the right course, a forward-looking, PROGRESSIVE course. I have spent the last fifty years of my life working and supporting a progressive political belief system and Calamity Politics is a result of those deep held beliefs.

Now, here I am in my seventies, horrified, as I watch the slow laborious work of three generations of concerned progressives being demolished in mere days by a power-mad megalomaniac with a pen, and the power of the “Executive Order.” To make things worse, it seems that President Trump & Mike Pence may have been elected with the help of a foreign government. President Trump, his lawless cabinet of billionaires, and his harem of whores in the US Congress must be stopped. How that happens will be up to us. The political bloggers, the newspaper reporters, the TV commentators, can’t do it by themselves. If you are angry and want to get control of this runaway train we need people who will speak up and speak out, we need progressive candidates, we need protesters in the street every weekend, and most importantly we need voters committed to a Progressive agenda.

So, please join me in my political rantings and ravings. I truly believe it is the only way I will be able to maintain my sanity.  My Mom always said, write it down, get it out, and then throw it away. I think I’ll write it down, but I’ll leave it up to my readers to decide if they want to throw it away. I’m hoping my posts will fire you up, get you off your butt. We’ve got plenty of things to fight for, and if my political blog can help ignite the fire, I’ll be here screaming about all the adverse and negative actions this administration is taking to return our country to a not so perfect time.

I am asking you to organize, vocalize, run for office, protest, resist, persist, start your own political blog. It will make you feel better, and hopefully, when we emerge from this nightmare, we will be better and stronger and never allow such a travesty to ever occur again.

Thank you,

D.S. Mitchell