In the weeks lead­ing up to this day, I’ve heard a lot of peo­ple proudly announce that they will abstain from vot­ing because both can­di­dates are rich/Christian/out of touch — or because So-and-So’s cam­paign man­ager is affil­i­ated with some cor­po­rate vil­lain or because nei­ther can­di­date is tak­ing a pro­gres­sive enough stance on a sin­gle issue, or just because peo­ple think that – regard­less of who’s in office – their lives won’t be affected.

And every time I hear it, I’m newly sad­dened and offended. Because while *I* have a prob­lem with the fact that both can­di­dates are rich/Christian/out of touch/affiliated with so-and-so/and not pro­gres­sive enough on a lot of issues I care about — *I* also have a lot at stake per­son­ally and polit­i­cally, depend­ing on who’s in office.

Know­ing that, it seems to me that those who say they have noth­ing at stake are not so much mak­ing a state­ment about their pol­i­tics, as much as a state­ment about their privilege.

As a woman, an eth­nic minor­ity, a stu­dent, a low-income cit­i­zen, here are just a few of the things I have at stake:

•    As a woman, I need and use more health care than men do, but lack insur­ance that cov­ers my needs – ALL of my needs, includ­ing birth con­trol and other repro­duc­tive health cov­er­age. Even on ASU’s dis­count health pro­gram, my (unpaid) stu­dent health fees are at about $900 right now as a result of birth con­trol, HPV vac­ci­na­tions, women well­ness exams, col­po­scopies and test­ing – all stan­dard, fre­quent pro­ce­dures for women.

•    As a woman, I make up part of the U.S. Labor Bureau’s sta­tis­tic states that women earn only 77 cents for every dol­lar paid to men…and yet I see laws pro­tect­ing against pay dis­crim­i­na­tion being weak­ened and my abil­ity to chal­lenge sex­ual harass­ment and other job dis­crim­i­na­tion being threatened.

•    I also see men of color earn­ing sig­nif­i­cantly less than white men for com­pa­ra­ble work – that’s fact: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t02.htm
•    As a stu­dent and low-income cit­i­zen, I have seen mil­lion­aires get a whop­ping tax cut of over $130,000 this year while funds were cut for stu­dent loans and Med­ic­aid. I’ve seen my finan­cial aid, in the way of fed­eral grants, decrease.

•    As a woman, I have seen my right to deter­mine whether/when/how I should have a child be chipped away slowly.

•    I see women – and specif­i­cally women of color — dis­pro­por­tion­ately under­rep­re­sented in Con­gress, in local gov­ern­ments, in the legal system…this is trou­bling because time has shown us that women –regard­less of polit­i­cal party – are more likely to be pro­gres­sive on women’s issues than even very lib­eral men.

I’m sure if every­one took a minute to think about it, they could gen­er­ate a list very sim­i­lar to this one, spe­cific to what they per­son­ally have at stake here.

ALL of these issues can be addressed within the cur­rent sys­tem we have, how­ever cor­rupt or unjust (or lam­en­ta­bly unso­cial­ist) it is. These are all things that have a huge impact on my life and the lives of those around me, and they are all things that our elected offi­cials have the power to change — and have changed in decades past. This isn’t about anar­chy, or roman­ti­cized rev­o­lu­tion or even exalted ide­al­ism. It’s about what we deserve, what our fel­lows deserve, in all of our every­day lives. Rev­o­lu­tion can come later. Right now, let’s just try to make sure that peo­ple who are here now — those who were born here and those who came here seek­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties are taken care of.

And to those priv­i­leged few who still main­tain that they are unaf­fected by pol­i­tics: The moment when you see your own rights com­prised is a really bad time to fig­ure out you had some­thing at stake all along. Own your priv­i­lege. Vote for the can­di­date who is more likely to ensure that every­one else has the same rights you already enjoy!!!

Vote Obama!

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