As a 2020 Delegate to the Democratic National Convention, I am voting “No” on the proposed Platform. I hope you will join me and the many other activists speaking out today as we advocate for taking healthcare further. We work on behalf of all Americans — for the betterment of everyone — because we believe it is the only right choice in front of us.

Here is why:

• The platform is an aspirational document. It is foolish to start with the incremental solution in a document that is supposed to lay out our highest goals. …

I know who to blame for the increased numbers of mass shootings in the United States, and it’s not the President. We are not thinking from a very nuanced place when we blame him. We need to instead be thinking more about what is missing in our culture that used to be present, where our own actions are encouraging divisive politics, and how we can take some responsibility for shifting the trend away from terrorism in our country.

In other words, it is critical that we think about our own behaviors instead of the President’s, in order to save ourselves…

My grandfather was on a ship, off the coast of Africa, during World War II. He worked as a dentist on the ship, and had an honorable discharge at the end of the war. However, when he came home, he had a psychotic break that resulted in my grandmother sitting with a hatchet, outside the door of my three-year-old mother’s room, in an effort to protect her.

These are facts that are supported by my mother’s retelling of them, over many decades, and by the historical records of the ship where he was stationed and the letters that were written…

Some characters and locations have been changed.

Art School, Baby

I started art school in the Fall of 1986, in a small mid-western town. I lived in a beige, one-bedroom apartment down the street from the school, with a roommate who had been assigned to me based on first-year housing questionnaires.

She was a confident and independent girl with a quick smile and an easy, friendly manner. Extroverted and with a long list of things to accomplish, she would breeze into the apartment chattering at full speed. …

Left to my own devices,

late at night,

I would discover I can dance

& sing — and

twirl around, pound the floor with my feet like there are things to kill.

Only, not with my body — just simple words, one & then another.

I love this free-form Medium. Where everything looks beautiful & where

we read these easy, swinging, gorgeous words that

dance, or stand perfectly

still, on white

&

follow

one after the other. We all know

they were made for us. Just us.

— New friends, that’s what they are.

Tag, you’re it, now.

You

go…