Who Speaks for You?

I’ve been silent on much this week, like many others, at first from shock, then in grief, followed by time to process yet another unnecessary horror. Then the voices of Congress broke this silence in an unimaginable way, by voting against universal background checks for gun purchases.

These voices didn’t speak for me.

These voices didn’t speak for the children of Sandy Hook and those on our urban streets or their families.

These voices didn’t even speak for their own constituents.

And this vote on the heels of the Boston Marathon bombing, which if anything had to be the last straw, right?! Nope. Our Congress failed us again. I keep seeing the 8-year-old boy, missing a bunch of front teeth, never to live his life, cut short; his mom with life-threatening brain injury; and a little 6-year-old girl missing a leg as well as her big brother and pal. A family ripped to the soul’s foundation. How do we allow this?

I know I’m not alone in this impotent rage I feel. I want to protest, to join like-minded citizens in voting out the entire Congress. They worry so much about their own asses, their greed obscures the real meaning of our times. Yet at the same time, I can feel myself teetering on giving up. Back ‘n’ forth, back ‘n’ forth.

Yet I know that if I do that, if we do that, then we give up our rights completely. At this moment, it feels like my vote doesn’t really count. Congress voted against its citizens! But so much is at stake: climate control, the Keystone Pipeline, gender equality, choice, and again and again on gun control. Universal background checks are the bare minimum of what we need, followed by taking those damn repeat-fire and assault weapons off our streets. No one but the military and federal law enforcement should have those kinds of weaponry.

What’s next? Will the Supreme Court have the courage to be truly visionary and rule in favor of gender equality, or will it remain chained by autocratic patriarchal thinking based on an outmoded paradigm? Are the dominoes falling in resonance? Divided we fall . . .

Have we gone totally mad in this country? Aren’t the people the foundation of our rule of law…by, of, and with? We are in this life together, and what we leave for future generations is in question on every front. Do we want generations of parents reassuring their children that there’s no monsters in the closet because they’re all in Congress?

I really believe in our potential to be visionaries. Each of us has our own unique greatness in our DNA. We observed, and some of us experienced, this greatness in the aftermath of the Boston bombing. We have to step into the role demanded of us. We have to vote Congress out if they don’t hear and vote by our voice. It’s time for us to be heard. The two biggest ever generations need to reach across the aisles and come together to make the future really work.

Women must lead the way. We need to form circles of women around the globe supporting transformation at every level with our voices, our pocketbooks, our vote, and our sweat and tears . . . we’ve already lost too much blood.

In what ways do you speak out, aside from in your vote?