Thoughts after 7/4/2020
photo by Ellen Sciales
I moved from San Francisco to Washington DC in 2011 to go to grad school and embark on a career in international relations.
Working in the nation’s capital, I quickly realized I couldn’t bear the hierarchy of politics, and began my journey as an entrepreneur and artist. After some great projects and false starts in DC, I moved to New York City in 2013 to start my first real company, subsequently incorporating my life’s work into my current company, Ars Poetica. I thought that creating art and positively impacting people one on one was enough, until Trump.
After a minority of votes caused the electoral college to give Trump the presidency, I realized I might have to get back into politics. I created the #poemsforsenators project in November 2016, delving for months into the “why” behind each of our Senators, covered by @betsyklein (CNN) and @tinamariposa (Bustle). I sold the 100 poems to fundraise for She Should Run because I learned through my research that when women step up to a calling of civil service and fight their way onto the ballot, they win elections and serve us better.
When COVID hit, the government response made me sick. Taxpayer money was funneled to publicly traded corporations, sycophants, and special interest groups, instead of small businesses like mine. Woman and POC-owned business assistance applications were rejected 90% of the time (an actual stat, not hyperbole). My poetic rage and #poemsforaworldonpause volunteer project caused me to be included in a NYT piece by @ninarobertsnyc about entrepreneurs’ responses to the event industry crash due to COVID.
I knew I couldn’t sit on the sidelines and wait for the event industry to “bounce back.” I couldn’t stay in New York at all. But what could I do, a quarantined unemployed professional poet?
I decided to campaign for the woman nationally seen as the presumptive nominee to run against the only man in this country who might actually be worse than the man in the White House: Kentucky Senator and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He’s been in the Senate for 35 years, using that time to increase his net worth to over $22M, gridlock almost all legislation including sexual misconduct protections, and pack our courts with far-right ideologue judges set on stripping the constitution for parts to sell our country to the highest bidders. This year will be his last.
In the month leading up to the primary election in Kentucky, we hit a boiling point in this society that is systemically racist, cruel, and violent against Black people. Within a few weeks, the Black Lives Matter movement went from being seen by many in mainstream white society as a radical protest slogan, to something that if you are not saying, seeing, sharing, and living every day, you must be ashamed of yourself.
I’m ashamed of myself for letting myself live so long benefitting from white supremacy and thinking I am good for just being a feminist and bringing my damn reusable straws with me everywhere and making my damned monthly donations to moveon.org.
Throughout June, momentum started to build not behind Amy McGrath, who had been the complete shoe-in until the protests began, but around another brilliant Democratic primary candidate, Charles Booker, who went from polling at just 6% with next to no name recognition outside the state, to very nearly beating the DNC-supported candidate on election day. The movement that catalyzed around his candidacy and the demands for justice for Breonna Taylor has humbled and amazed me. When Booker conceded the primary win to McGrath after a week of tallying votes in a very volatile climate, he did so with such power and integrity, I couldn’t help but feel he will rise up again very soon to take the seat of veritable lunatic Rand Paul in 2022. He will have my vote.
’Til then, I will be campaigning to bring Amy McGrath to the US Senate on November 3rd, and continuing to demand justice for Breonna Taylor and thousands of other victims of white supremacy and police brutality in this country.
I came to Kentucky to apply my passion for language arts to something much bigger than entertainment at luxury events. **Though please for the love of all things, please book my incredible artists immediately for any IRL or virtual events, remote creative, content, or copywriting work. I’m still an entrepreneur.**
I came to Kentucky to see if my obsession with empathy and the power of words can help bring a thoughtful, caring, strong woman to take the place of a ruthless, greedy sociopath in our government.
I came to Kentucky to support Amy McGrath as she takes her seat in the US Senate, and takes down at least half of the amoral duo that have become the top enemy of our Republic.
I know we will win back our country, and win perhaps our first real chance at real transformative justice, if we never ever give up, and we work together. I simply cannot believe anything different.
photo by Leslie Lyons