Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

It’s Blog Action Day, and I Voted

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Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers of every persuasion are tasked with writing about a common issue. This year’s issue is Poverty.

There were quite a lot of things I thought about writing about. I thought about my patients, who are mostly poor and uninsured and often don’t take their medications because feeding their children is a higher priority than buying their blood pressure pills. I thought about organizations such as The Hunger Project, which is dedicated to sustainable strategies towards ending the chronic hunger and poverty that affects over 800 million people worldwide. I could have written about climate change, which exerts its largest effect upon the world’s poor and is the theme of this year’s Word Food Day (which is tomorrow). Or how about about the shame I feel that in my own country, one of the world’s wealthiest, more than one in ten people lives with hunger and poverty?

I decided to write about none of that and all of that at once: I decided to use this post to urge you to vote, because our vote is one of the most powerful weapons we have in the fight against poverty.

I won’t tell you who you should vote for, but I’ll tell you who I voted for for President (I mailed in my ballot last night, and I feel damned good about it).

I voted for someone who has an anti-poverty agenda, someone who understands that when some of us are poor, we are all poorer. I voted for someone who believes it is fair that those of us who have more contribute more, so we will all become richer. I voted for someone who will work for a sensible health care policy so people won’t have to choose between food and medicine. I voted for someone who wants our country to be a partner and a leader, not a bully or a brat, in global cooperative efforts to address climate change.

If you disagree with my choice, OK. I still hope you’ll vote. If you want to make a difference in poverty, think about spending your precious and powerful vote on the leader you think offers the best hope of doing that.

CommentsLeave a comment

  1. i’d vote for obama as well if i were american.

    i also think it’s great you have the kiva banner up. 🙂

    i’m quite fond of kiva, as well as freerice and goodsearch, as ways people can help alleviate poverty online.

    saw this post via the front page of blog action day. it’s great that you’re participating. 🙂

  3. You go girl! I have my mail in ballot (and the big little booklet of info) and I plan to sit down and do my homework and vote this weekend (although I’ve been doing my homework for the presidential race for some time now). Good on ya!

  4. Bravo, Susan. I knew it since the first time I came across your blog that you are someone cool, who cares about alleviating poverty, community-based efforts, etc!

    If I were an American, I too will vote for Obama. I wish the whole world could vote, and you will all see a landslide win. Time for a wind of change to blow.

    I live in Upstate NY now, and my house in Jakarta, Indonesia is right next to the school where Obama went when he was young, the one that rumored to be a madrasa. I know it for real, it is not, not at all even a religious school. Just want you to know that! Cheers!

  5. People get ready
    There’s a change a coming
    You don’t need a ticket
    Just get on board!!!!!
    Its time for us all to unite and share the “bread” and focus on the future.

  8. Being new to blogging, having my own relatively new small personal blog, I didn’t know about the other blogs mentioned on this site. As a Canadian of American Heritage whose ancestors landed on the American shores 373 years ago, I too would vote for Barack Obama were I able. Thank you for such a super and insightful Blog.

  10. Good for you Susan. I think we need to make best use of choices available to us, however limited; but the important thing is to exercise them. Great to see you in on Blog Action Day too!!

  11. Yes, if I were American, I would vote for Obama too. From over here, he looks and sounds very serious about the work ahead of him and of all Americans. We’d keep our fingers crossed here. 🙂

  12. I find it interesting that all of you folks who are not US citizens are ready to support the selection of Obama as the American President. Do you want us to be just as overtaxed and rule-bound as you are? Many of us in America find Obama to be far too much of a socialist and too much of an appeaser. Since this is not a political blog, I won’t go in to all the reasons that I feel Obama, the US Senator with the most liberal voting record in Congress, would be very bad for our country, but I would like those of you who are Americans to remember that keeping our country strong is what keeps us safe. Obama will be a miserable failure at keeping us strong. And when the rest of the world needs a strong American help in the future–as they have in the past–it won’t be there if Obama is elected President.

  13. ditto, JanH! thanks for standing up to the enthralled -obsessed masses. no one wants people to starve, but electing obama does not mean eradicating poverty — it means impoverishing everyone by higher taxes and fewer jobs. as jfk said, a rising tide lifts everyone. the same is true of the reverse!

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