Self Evident

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men were created equal.

Today has been a sobering and powerful day. I hit up the monuments, the Holocaust Museum, and the Archives.

As I stood in the monuments and read the speeches, I was in awe. I am still in awe. I am inspired. I also a little afraid.

Afraid that we are resting on ideals of the past and failing again to take responsibility for the now. We look back at 6 million Jews and say never again. We forget about Darfur and the many other genocides happening today. We focus on the Jews and forget that the Roma were and still are severely mistreated in Europe. We act like the lives of the Jews have been fully restored, but there are villages that are gone forever.

We also, like many of the naive Germans, claim that we don't know what is happening, even as 27 million people are enslaved all around us. We hold on to the idea that once upon a time we said all were created equal, and having said that we feel we have done enough.

Because of the economic crisis we have dropped the ball on slavery issues in the country. The TVPRA has to be reauthorized every 2 years. Time is up. If it is not pushed through in the Lame Duck session it will be dropped and all the positive changes (20 improvements that have been fought hard for) will be lost as legislators have to start over next January. The good news is that Biden is a major champion of this bill, if he is VP that will help it get through. If he is not the VP then he can get back to working on passing it, but in reality it needs to get through now.


Please write your senator and house reps to tell them to get the TVPRA through! Encourage them to push it to the front of the list of issues to deal with in the Lame Duck session. It is a matter of life and death- I am not being dramatic.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all members of humanity are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If slavery isn't wrong then nothing is wrong- Abraham Lincoln