We Have Work To Do

A big sigh of relief has swept over the nation today as Joe Biden is declared the next president of the United States. A tyrant had been running the show for the past for years and America finally decided to kick him off center stage. There is hope for the first time in what seems like forever! It seems like, for the first time in so long, we can finally again live up to our name, the land of the free.

I, too, felt the weight fall from my shoulders when all the over the news everyone was saying “Joe did it, he won”. I almost sobbed with relief. But, after I managed to compose myself again, I began to realize how much work we still had to do.

We still have to get this virus under control. Coronavirus has been running wild across this country (and all over the world) and Trump did NOTHING to try and stop the numbers from rising. Biden needs to shut the country down and put us all on quarantine again until we can get this under control. We need mask mandates EVERYWHERE! We need someone who is going to listen to the scientist and Joe Biden has already said he would do such.

Next, we need to fight racial injustice in this country and have major police reform. Black men and women (and children) are constantly in danger of having cops play judge, jury, and executioner on the street. Our criminal justice system has, for too long, been corrupt and the black community has continued to be stepped on by them, while white people remain silent (and I recognize my own privilege when I say these things and want to use that privilege to fight for the black community). There are children in cages at our borders, who have been separated from their families, because their parents sought a better life in our country. People in cages sounds more like Nazi Germany than it does the United States of America. Enough is enough. We must continue to fight for the black community until we see actual change happen. We free these people that did nothing wrong but look for a brighter future and reunite the families that were torn apart. We have to work to change a corrupt system that has been allowed to reign for far too long.

Climate change is real and Joe Biden believes the science behind that. We do not have a planet B or earth 2.0 to go to when humans get through destroying this one. Biden is hopeful that his effort against climate change will also create more job opportunities as well.

Student debt is a huge problem that Joe Biden has not spoken much on. Student debt has become such a weight to carry and hardly any student can back the thousands of dollars that a college degree cost in the times we live in. This is a problem even I suffer from. Biden needs to address the student debt problem in more than just pushing back the time we have to start repaying it. He needs to eliminate it.

The disabled community is a major factor in how Joe Biden got elected and they are suffering in ways that ableds don’t ever really think about. It is extremely hard to start receiving disability benefits to begin with, but once they are received, they can be taken away for a variety of reasons that are inhumane. Benefits can be taken away if a disabled person gets married (or even if they are just in a relationship or seem “too happy” to be disabled”) and it is still legal to pay a disabled person below the minimum wage. Biden needs to listen to the disabled community and fight for them like we did for him.

Is Joe Biden the answer to all of our problems? No. But the future looks a bit brighter now that he has been declared the president elect for 2021. But we cannot stop fighting now. We cannot stop raising our voices just because we think we have won. We have won nothing if real change doesn’t happen. We cannot call ourselves Americans if all of us are not free.