What do we do now?

 

By JoAnne Young 

It’s started already. A worry everyday since the election, with appointments and predictions of what we're in for. Shouldn’t we have just a few remaining weeks to know we are OK, to have at least a short break in the constant drama that was the 2024 election? There’s been no time to prepare for the exhaustion we will no doubt experience beginning in January. 

 

In a conversation with friends, we agreed it’s one thing to sit around and lament and wring our hands, and it’s another to say, OK, what are we going to do now? What are we going to do to make things better for those who don’t have the means to wait things out, who could suffer in so many ways in the next four years. 

 

So many in our community are being left behind. 

 

How are we going to persuade those 45,410 registered voters in Lancaster County who did not cast a ballot how much they are needed two years from now during mid-term elections? Convince them that even if they have given up on the political system, sometimes for good reason, they will be swept in the results of this 2024 election? 

 

It's worth noting that more than 1,500 Lancaster County voters didn’t check a box for a presidential candidate. That’s known as undervoting. Nearly 600 voted for more than one presidential candidate, known as overvoting, and that vote for president doesn’t count. About 1,000 wrote in another name, a protest vote that also didn’t count. In addition, close to 4,000 didn’t mark a preference for Senate candidates Deb Fischer or Dan Osborn, and nearly 5,000 chose not to vote for either Pete Ricketts or Preston Love Jr. 

 

Our microcosm of Lancaster County spoke loudly in the voting booth, and gave us something to ponder. 

 

In this week as we approach Thanksgiving and spend time with family and friends, it makes me think back to a speech by George H.W. Bush, that invited us all to be among a thousand points of light in this country. Yes, he may have been trying to push off government responsibilities onto individuals, charities and churches, but I have tried to think beyond that. We may be needed now more than ever, especially since Donald Trump seems to have no understanding of what it means to be a participant in the goodness of our future. 

 

“Thousand Points of Light. I never quite got that one,” he said at a rally in 2018. “What the hell is that? Has anyone ever figured that one out?”

 

I think it’s a pretty easy concept. You can be one of those little candles of brightness and hope, even in the most unexpected places and times.  

◊ My beloved granddaughter came to visit last week from Florida, where she’s a high school senior, and I asked her, since she attends a private school, if the Florida education laws have restricted what she has been taught about race or other banned topics in the state. Florida law threatens public school teachers with termination of their jobs or certification if they engage in classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity. It restricts what a teacher can say about race and racism and forbids teachers from discussing anything that could make students feel guilt, anguish, or psychological distress for actions committed in the past and for which the students played no part. In one of her classes, she said, the students did study racism. They did touch on LGBTQ topics, with the teacher acknowledging the related Florida laws. I felt relieved to hear that, that there will be pockets in America for our young people to continue to learn what they need to be learning. 

 

◊ My husband and I deliver supplemental food for the Food Bank of Lincoln, and our small list of people who would have trouble getting to food distributions included a woman only a couple of years older than me who waits outside her apartment door each week in anticipation of our visit and the needed food we bring. In our short chats, I have grown to care about her personally and to count her as a friend. She, and all of us really, rely on the help and attention of others. I know I do. But she especially has touched me and taught me about the people our political and governmental systems seem to have forgotten, purposefully or just out of turning their attention neglectfully elsewhere. 

 

◊ Many of my Lincoln friends have been daily points of light in so many ways, in hospitals, on nonprofit boards, for immigrants needing help in adjusting to a new country and learning English, and in advocating for foster children in court proceedings. Couldn’t we all be a point of light, spread like stars across our city, our state? 

 

I saw a quote today by the late Frank LeMere, a Native activist and politician, and a leader in the Democratic party. He said: “Nothing changes unless we make ourselves uncomfortable.”  How great if we could convert our discomfort with politicians and policies and fears for our nation to defiance.

 

We are OK as long as we continue to care. Our universe is made up of millions of stories. And each story has the potential to contain a point of light.