VOTE!

My blog isn't a political place, but I'm really excited about the upcoming election. I haven't been able to volunteer as much as I have in the past because of my crazy travel schedule, and that schedule is keeping me home from the big event today: a rally in Cleveland with Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Bruce Springsteen. As much as I would love to go, I'm currently fighting off a cold, I've got huge meetings all week and I leave for Amsterdam next Sunday - no time to really come down sick, so there is no braving the weather and standing on the mall for me today. I feel like I'm missing something historic.

However, for readers Republican and Democratic alike, I wanted to post a little something my friend J. posted on another forum. He is a brilliant thinker and a fabulous writer, but prefers to be anonymous. This is part of a much longer post, but in a year when the elections have been so divisive, I think it's good to remember the things that bring us together:

"Reality does have a liberal bias, and when architecture and urban planning conspires to place people more firmly into the reality of the people around them, and not buried somewhere behind a large lawn, a courtyard wall, in the "media room" in the center of the house, plugged in to Fox News, suddenly they realize they've been a liberal all along, and that the values that they thought they supported as Republicans, values such as community, family, prosperity, and security, are actually really Democratic values. The only difference is that we mean these things for everyone, and we realize that we must accomplish them together, or not at all. Prosperity for some, and poverty for others, is not prosperity when you have a connection to a mixed community, and, whether you realize it or not, you do have such a connection. Security doesn't mean walls and fences and weapons, it means good neighbors who keep in touch with each other and watch out for each other, and it doesn't matter what race, class, or religion those neighbors are, all that matters is that you help each other out because you're in it together. Community isn't a self-selected group of white evangelicals in a mega-church, or a self-selected group of the well-to-do in a gated community, it's whoever happens to be around at that moment and whoever lives next door. Families aren't just a working father, a stay at home mom, and 2.4 kids in the suburbs, it might be the retired widower next door whose grown son lives with him, along with the son's girlfriend and her child from a former marriage, or a lesbian couple and their kids, or whatever. Families take all shapes, and all lives are equally valid and human.

When you deal with the full spectrum of humanity, and you find that we all really want the same things, suddenly the Republican politics of division and fear start to sound insane."