Analilia Mejia: “I rise because our Nation is at a crossroads. We face a familiar foe: the avarice of the powerful who rig our electoral…”

“I rise because our Nation is at a crossroads. We face a familiar foe: the avarice of the powerful who rig our electoral systems in order to cement their power. This story is as old as our Nation. The powerful weaken the power of the many so that they cannot be held to account. After all, if entire communities are silenced, then the greed that results in cancer alleys, in mass unemployment, high infant mortality, or explosive unaffordability has neither check nor balance. While these actions begin along racial lines, the harm rarely limits itself to the same. While stripping Black Americans of hard-fought political power is weaponized racism that would make Strom Thurmond proud, the result is that every American is, in fact, losing their representative government. This is an act of war against democracy, and we should see it as such.”