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Yes, We Should All Vote For Change
We should all vote for change during this year's elections, but let's remember that it is we that are the primary movers of change in our country.
This article appeared in the Miami Herald on 10/19/08
We are living in historic times. Both presidential candidates now clamor for change, one as an anti-establishment maverick, the other for ''change we can believe in.'' We all agree. Change is needed.
Many of us have spent our lives working for change, for universal healthcare, quality public education, affordable housing, for the right to form unions, protecting our environment or supporting legalization for immigrant families.
We've been repeatedly told to leave it to the market forces of competition, a pillar of our political economy.
At best, we've been told there's not enough to go around. At worse, racism and classism have been allowed to cloud our vision and misdirect blame, criminalizing the poor, so-called welfare queens or today's most popular scapegoat -- undocumented families.
It becomes increasingly clear that it's not a matter of resources, nor, in fact, a matter of anti-government ideology. If we can afford $10 billion per month for perpetual war, then we can afford healthcare access for all. If we spend almost a trillion dollars of public money to bail out these market forces, then we don't have an ideological problem with government intervention, do we?
But what do we get in return? Well, we better get real change. Not chump change, a cheap slogan or a new cast of players, but a different story line altogether. We who work for change believe that we are, can and should be actors in the unfolding play of our common story.
The change the moment demands is systemic and structural, new rules consistent with our shared values of equality and solutions that expand opportunity for everyone, especially those who work so hard, for so little and have been shut out for so long.
On the first day of early voting, Oct. 20, throughout Florida, naturalized immigrants and their children will be mobilizing to vote in unprecedented numbers, fulfilling the chants during the recent historic marches, ``Today we march, tomorrow we vote.''
We are doing it together -- black, brown and white, immigrant and U.S.-born -- with those who have also fought to be valued and respected long before us, across race, class and generations. We will not be pitted against each other.
Immigrant workers should not be exploited to the detriment of U.S.-born workers. American youth, regardless of legal status, should not be criminalized, but supported to go to college, not prisons or detention centers.
None of these ideas is new or radical. Regardless of who's elected, it's really up to us to make it happen. It's our shared government, our shared economy, our common destiny. It's our lives.
Maria Rodriguez is the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Gihan Perera is the executive director of the Miami Workers Center.
