We all feel a little lighter today.
It felt like the longest week of a very long year, during a presidential administration that has been tedious and challenging at its best and life-threatening at its worst.
The wait is over as this morning the race in Pennsylvania, follow by Nevada, were called for Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris. Harris will be the first woman, and woman of color, to hold the Vice Presidency.
It’s hard to put to words my emotions today, much less the emotion on display by my friends and loved ones, women and people of color, or at Black Lives Matter Square in Washington, DC.
This is not the end of suffering or disenfranchisement. We haven’t seen the last black man killed needlessly by a police officer nor black woman who dies too young because her healthcare is devalued by her doctor. Just as hard as we fought to remove Trump from office, so we must fight to rebuild and expand protections for our Transgender friends as well as those for our immigrant neighbors.
Here in Olympia, what was once a dog whistle, is now an air raid siren. We have forces of hate lining up both in our streets to physically threaten and attack our community, and lining up to run for office.
We have to keep organizing and stay ahead of this threat. The beautiful lesson of today is that we’ve proven we CAN. President Obama told us we could and I don’t think we believed him. I believe it now because I’ve seen it.
Stacey Abrams led us to victory by out organizing those who suppress our voices. We can take those lessons and use them here to do the same. We CAN, and we WILL.
So, tomorrow we organize. But today we celebrate. We celebrate love and the power we have when we come together and stand up for what’s right.
I’ll see you around the bend.
