A Girl Can Dream

I want a president, not a predator. I want to read news about her kindness, not another social media attack. I want political nominees who aren’t accused of sexual assault, pedophilia, or all different manner of financial crimes. I want leaders who encourage and add to the melting pot, not those who strain out the white potatoes as their favorite part.

I don’t want to go backwards when it comes to legal rights for all variety of people. I want everyone to truly be equal in the eyes of every one else and every social system in existence. I want to vote for leaders who live this, breath this and enforce it to their utmost.

I want our leaders to be the type who come from very little and still live modestly, like the majority of those being led do.

I want exorbitant wealth to come with tremendous social responsibilities, and I want greed to be criminalized.

I want people to be more important and to hold more power than corporations.

I want our country to be run like a country, not a business, where people and our connection to the land come first. Not shareholders, not profit, not war, not oil, not weapons, not trade, not anything. I want leaders who invest in our education, health, diversity, equality and potential.

I want anyone who works a full-time job to be able to survive on that wage and not have to work a second job or donate plasma or rent-out a bedroom to get by. I want all companies to pay their employees a decent wage because it’s an honor and a responsibility of being in business. I don’t want businesses to expect employees to sacrifice their well-being by accepting less than a living wage to work there.

I want religion to be a personal practice and not turned into laws that are forced on the rest of the country.

I want the teachings of Jesus Christ to be what Christianity is truly about. I want his compassion for the poor, the diseased, and the people of the street to be remembered and practiced widely. I want his intolerance for politically-tainted religious leaders to be the norm. I want us to follow his example of welcoming everyone to the table and treating them as equals.

I want the goodness inherent in other religions to be recognized and celebrated, instead of the dominant religion continuing to point at and criminalize all others’ shortcomings except its own.

I want medical bills to be a thing of the past. I want everyone to have health insurance regardless of where they do or don’t work so that some unforeseen emergency doesn’t put them in the poor-house or on the streets.

I want marijuana, which has killed exactly zero people, to be legalized nationwide, and alcohol, which kills 88,000 people every year in the U.S., to be criminalized as the gateway drug that it is.

I want a society that values the elderly, their experience, their wisdom, and all they have to offer. I want our elders to take their rightful place in our communities as educators, nurturers, and advisors.

I want retirees to be guaranteed that a system they paid into will pay them back in their golden years. I want our government to leave Social Security alone and let it work for the people.

I want us to raise our children without inflicting pain and shame as a means of punishment. I want us to see how this could truly change the world.

I want our trillion-dollar food system to be completely overhauled, with poisonous trans fats, high fructose corn syrup and the like to be permanently banned.

I want men to own their responsibility for 100% of unplanned pregnancies, making a pre-emptive solution to abortion their bodily responsibility. I want women to stop bearing the physical, social, emotional and financial repercussions of men’s selfish pleasure pursuits of where and when men orgasm.

I want women to be in charge of women’s bodies, just as men are in charge of men’s bodies. I don’t want a male-majority government to make laws about female bodies and I don’t want a futuristic female-government to make laws about male bodies.

I want the descendants of Indigenous Americans and African Americans to receive reparations for the horrific suffering European settlers imposed on their ancestors and the fallout that continues to impact future generations’ way of life.

I want the trillions of dollars we spend on the trappings of war to go, in part, towards making amends with the people we have hurt the most. I want us to practice peace by offering money and cooperation, even though nothing can ever replace the lives lost and ways of life damaged forever.

I don’t want weapons of war in the hands of civilians. I don’t want weapons of war to exist. Period.

I want us to respect the earth as a living, breathing organism that we came from and will return to, instead of repeatedly raping her for whatever wealth she may possess.

I want to live in a world where these wants are reality and not wishes.

I want to be the warrior who does whatever she can to make it so.

I want to believe that if a girl can dream it, a woman can wake up to it someday.

(Column 104 – Published September 25th in the Warroad Pioneer)

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