Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.

To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.

To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.

To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into servitude.

– Octavia E. Butler

Vice President Kamala Harris

A vision of our nation as a Beloved Community, where all are welcome, no matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we love.

A country where we may not agree on every detail, but we are united by the fundamental belief that every human being is of infinite worth, deserving of compassion, dignity and respect.

A country where we look out for one another, where we rise and fall as one, where we face our challenges, and celebrate our triumphs – together.

We must elect a president who will bring something different, something better, and do the important work. A president who will bring all of us together, Black, White, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, to achieve the future we collectively want … one that is strong and decent, just and kind. One in which we all can see ourselves.

That’s the vision that our parents and grandparents fought for. The vision that made my own life possible. The vision that makes the American promise, for all its complexities and imperfections, a promise worth fighting for.

* See here for Vice President Kamala Harris’ DNC speech in its entirety.

“Lift Off”

For generations we have known of knowledge’s infinite power.
Yet somehow, we’ve never questioned the keeper of the keys
The guardians of information.

For some, the only difference between a classroom and a plantation is time.
How many times must we be made to feel like quotas
Like tokens in coined phrases?
“Diversity. Inclusion”
There are days I feel like one, like only
A lonely blossom in a briar patch of broken promises.
But hey, I’ve always been a thorn in the side of injustice.

Our stories are ladders
That make it easier for us to touch the stars.

At the core, none of us were meant to be common.
We were born to be comets.

So a child can see their potential from right where they stand.
An injustice is telling them they are stars
Without acknowledging night that surrounds them.

Injustice is telling them education is the key
While you continue to change the locks.

Education is no equalizer
Rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream.

So wake up, wake up! Lift your voices
Until you’ve patched every hole in a child’s broken sky.

I belong among the stars.
And so do you. And so do they.

Together – together we can inspire galaxies of greatness
For generations to come.
No, no, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning.

* The following is an excerpt from Donovan Livingston’s Harvard Graduate School of Education Student Speech “Lift Off” on May 25, 2016. For full transcript.