Climate change has been here for a while now kids. There’s no doubt that each state and municipality has a Bo role to play. No mistake further, representatives to the federal government in Washington, D.C. have an important position to play as leaders.
New senator from Arizona’s 9th District, Kyrsten Sinema, this is your article.
This one is for that beautifully-open, open-borders, bisexual Democratic candidate that won her 2018 midterm election bid. This is for that progressive candidate Arizonans, and especially the young ones, were hoping for. The candidate I playfully refer to as Felicity Smoak, one of my greatest non-super, super-hero, fictional TV idols.
This one is for the woman that students voted for, even when they were burnt out, drowning in debt, and feeling the foreboding fear of the future. A vote made to conquer that fear. That fear which is, I’ll remind you, in part, due to how we have voted, legislated, communicated, and degradated the planet through poor stewardship, in the past and to this day.
There’s a lot of work to do and students, young people, Millennials, adults, the middle-aged, and the elderly, everyone, voted for you. They saw you as that rock. Those people that voted for you put their belief and hope in your hands assuming that those hands would go to the people’s work.
On March 26, 2019, on one of the most important votes in your career, you stepped away from those progressives that we’re leaning on you. They’ve fallen on their faces, as you may, hopefully, also feel you’ve done. They counted on you, to at the very least, vote present in the face if this sham of a vote.
You didn’t though. Here’s what you did do, from the Senate floor:
“At 4:17pm, the Senate began a 15 minute roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture [procedure to end debate and move to vote] on the motion to proceed to S.J.Res.8, recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-KY) set up this vote in order to tie up hands in a process of debate. I saw this happen in student association government in New York.
Let me say that another way, and to be clear kids are a lot more intuitively intelligent than adults in my opinion, but again: I saw the same tactics used by children when the conversation was about student identification modification for adult transgender students.
But the vote was begun in the chamber minutes to 4:20, and this was the outcome from the 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents:
Yays: 0 – Nays: 57. Most Democrats voted “Present” in order to avoid justifying the tactic. But that leaves 2 Democrats doesn’t it?
This is where this comes back to you Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). Yourself, Doug Jones (D-AL), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and, Independent from Maine, Angus King, voted Nay. As in, there wasn’t enough debate regarding whose job it was to be the leader on this issue. That doesn’t sound like a leader.
That’s why you were elected though, Kyrsten. People saw you as leadership material on that level. They believed in what you’ve done and what you could do. Now there’s a lot of doubt surrounding that part of you.
On Tuesday, your constituents didn’t see you step up to the plate as a leader. They saw you sit down next to McSally (R-AZ) and vote Right beside her. Meanwhile, those progressives that saw hope in you are looking to real leaders such as Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who voted “Present” with the Democrats, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), spending every chance she can get, getting that message across:
This isn’t about who takes charge on this issue. We all are responsible. We just expect more responsibility from our leadership as well, especially those of us who feel the impetus is upon us.
Those are the people that voted for you. Don’t let this become a habit, because in today’s political climate, ain’t nobody got time for that lack of leadership and gumption.
I leave you with the facts:
This one comes from the state that I most recently called home, Boulder, CO, and should dispel any issues you have with the climate debate as it appears in media coverage.
And here’s just climate news.
Plus, if you don’t already, you should read reports from the UN on the subject.
Besides, if it isn’t the federal government job, whose is it Kyrsten?
Solely the UN?
Your constituents have questions. And some words:
“To me, being anti-Green Deal isn’t any different than being pro-extinction of the humankind.” — Juan Mendez, March 15, 2019. AZCentral.
— To the care of Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).
Brienna Parsons 