A Message To Every Woman and Every Person of Color on the 2024 Election.

Every woman and every person of color has a responsibility to to dispel a cancer that permeates our society. The cancer will continue its metastasis if we continue to give it our consent.

I am not speaking from a position of prejudice or malice. I may make a mistake in my “word-ology,” but I will be ready to learn and apologize where necessary.

This election is about freedom, respect for the Constitution, women’s reproductive rights and agency to their bodies, personal rights, and much more. More important than those existential issues is human equity. In the aggregate, women and people of color have always borne the bulk of inequity, and that affects the issues enumerated above.

I remember from a very young age being told by my Panamanian parents that I had to work very hard because I had to be twice or more as good as the white man for half the outcome. I grew up in the Canal Zone, a sliver of land bordering the Panama Canal controlled by the Americans. Racism & patriarchy was the rule, just like it has in the U.S., I got that speech on steroids when I immigrated to the United States, and it stuck with me.

Solutions were missing from those statements. At the University of Texas, I became an activist, much to the discontent of my father. “I sent you here to go to school,” he would say often, " not to be some radical.” There were various permutations of those statements. I was angry at him because I felt Panamanians allowed another country to come onto their land to disrespect and mistreat those who were born there.

At my university, I could make a difference in the fight against injustices here and elsewhere. I fought for the university’s divestiture from South African investments and many ills at the university.

But I had my cultural demons. As a black Caribbean Latino, I was a sexist and a homophobe. I changed because the behavior was unacceptable. Most importantly, I changed because I was educated by other activists, male and female, gay and straight, and was able then to change from the mind and the heart.

But I remained internally angry at the system. I won small battles. But the life of having to work twice as hard became my modus operandi, so much so that it is my existence.

My experience is no different than the experience of most people of color AND women. In fact, I have proven that being a woman from all history that I know, in the aggregate has had the most difficulty as an identity. Following the rules and working hard is often not enough.

And then there was Donald J. Trump. Trump is the prototype of the privileged man in our society on steroids. If we give him an honest assessment, he has been a facade of success wrapped around a complete failure. I don’t have to enumerate his crimes, bankruptcies, misogyny, xenophobia, frauds, and cons, as they are well documented. I don’t need to articulate his contempt for women and people of color as he cannot help himself in letting us know. I don’t have to point out his lack of intellect and vocabulary. It’s there for all to see. The man was a former president that drove a good economy he was ceded into a COVID-19 mismanaged ditch.

To move forward in my professional and activist career, I had to change, be educated, and be competent. The same applies to every woman or person of color. Kamala Harris has a stellar record of achievements, having served in government both in the executive branch and the Senate. She has qualifiable and quantifiable accomplishments attained from her intellect. She does not have the moral or criminal flaws of Donald Trump. She has already served a heartbeat away from the presidency as Vice President.

My father once told me that if he had reacted as I expected him to to the mistreatment in the Canal Zone, I likely would not have been born or grown up to come to the U.S. and fulfill many of my dreams. I get it. Things were different then.

What is upsetting in the 2024 election is that with a vote, not violence, we can finally replace the privileged incompetent with the competent. We can break the cycle of some having to work twice as hard for half of the outcome.

When women and people of color or any American of conscience vote for Donald Trump, they are complicit in a status quo that marginalizes many identities. Voting for VP Kamala Harris on November 5th will change that trajectory.

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