By Miguel Lloyd
Summer is over. Fall is here. The political season is in full swing.
With the election of a reality star as president, our politics have gone the way of trash TV. In that world, it’s easy to make a binary choice. You either like one character or the other. With politics, making your choices like that is extremely dangerous to our society.
In the weeks leading up to this year’s mid-term elections, our headlines have included sexual assault victims being demonized, while men have successfully painted themselves as victims for being frat boys. The Republicans have hardened their strategy of voter suppression as a winning one, while the Democrats continue to ignore rural and middle America while focusing on social issues.
With that said, it is now and has always been about local elections. While focusing on the high school drinking habits of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, we never focus on the Voting Rights Act, which has made voter oversight a thing of the past. Without Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, there’s very little control that the federal government has over local and state elections.
JEEPAC believes in focusing on simple fairness and policy that translates into economic prosperity for all who are willing to earn it. All the problems that we have are symptoms of a lack of equity in economic policies constructed by our government. As long as our approach to politics remains the same, our communities will either digress or remain stagnant for generations.
Well, what can we do about it? Here are a few things to get you focused and not flustered by the tweet of the day:
Be a better filter of information. The game of politics is no better or worse than it has ever been. The problem we have now is the filters are gone. We don’t trust journalism if it has been labeled “fake news.” We only ingest information from the sources telling us what we want to hear. That makes us easy marks for tweets from the president stirring up distractions. Read as much as you can from as many sources as you have time to read — then make your decisions.
Start a business today. Whether you sell pies during the holidays, drive for Uber or use your skills to pursue government contracting, in this country, power only respects power. Having the ability to be a successful entrepreneur will give you the control over your destiny that is eluding you.
Don’t be so quick to act, and be kind to each other. That may come off as a “Mayberry” line to many, but in a world where social media comments turn into death threats, we need to think twice about what we are doing to our society.
In many cases, both parties have turned their backs on you. Study the issues. Understand the candidates and vote for what is in the best interest of you, your family and your business.
Miguel Lloyd, CEO of Lloyd Media Group, is a communications consultant with JEEPAC, the political action committee of Justice Equality & Economics (JEE), a progressive research and policy organization committed to holding the local, state and federal government accountable for social and economically disadvantaged businesses and entrepreneurs.
