Letter to My Congressional Representatives

Dear Representative Loudermilk, Senator Perdue, and Senator Isakson: 

If economic stability and national security require that a government undermines human rights, stifles creativity, silences criticism, ignores logic and/or pillages our natural resources, then either new solutions must be found, or the whole system must be overhauled.

• Proposed budget cuts to arts and human rights programs are unacceptable, especially when military spending comprises the vast majority of the existing budget.
• Increased militarization of the police force is unacceptable, especially in the wake of police shootings and attacks at Standing Rock.
• The proposal to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and to continue pioneering projects which accelerate global warming, exploit our natural resources and pollute our environment are unacceptable.
• Provisions which allow public institutions to use religion as grounds for censorship, denial of service and denial of healthcare are unacceptable.
• Provisions which equate religious conviction with scientific fact are unacceptable—especially within the arena of education.
• Restrictions on journalism are unacceptable.
• Suppressing and stripping rights based solely on ethnicity and/or religion is unacceptable.
• The lack of qualifications, concentration of wealth and conflicts of interest possessed by the current administration are unacceptable.
• The absence of professionalism which has come to characterize the present administration's interactions with global leaders, as well as the public (via both traditional and social media) is unacceptable.
• The level of institutionalized racism and sexism (much of which occurs within the criminal justice system) is appalling, and the normalization of it at the personal level is unacceptable.
• The reliance on deals rather than level-headed diplomacy destabilizes our economy long-term and is unacceptable as well.

Understanding these points and taking them into account while creating policy is the only response which I will accept. Until this occurs, I will work both outside and inside the system to make a difference. I will donate to and volunteer with organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union, which will challenge you directly. I will also support and utilize organizations which provide the services the Trump administration's unacceptable policies seek to undermine or eliminate. I will march. I will boycott. I will call. I will write. I will educate. I will vote for people who share my views and will publicly denounce those who do not.

We are in danger of nuclear war. We are in danger of environmental devastation. We are in danger of social self destruction due to our own fundamentalism. We are in danger of economic collapse, in the aftermath of which it will become easier for the authoritarian regimes liberals have panicked about to legitimately take hold.

It is our shared responsibility to recognize these dangers and work together to prevent them.

Sincerely,

Kelli Lynn Karanovich

American Citizen, Mother, Wife, Activist, Writer & Entrepreneur

P.S.

I'd like to share a photo of the poster I took to the Women's March on Washington January 21^st, 2017. I scrawled the message while riding up on a chartered bus. It reads:

In the end, it will be our humility which heals us. We must stand in awe of how strikingly similar and different we all are. No one can ever fully know another person's story. We must move forward with policies which reflect this and acknowledge the beauty of our shared struggle to be human at this time.

As you can see, my daughter composed her own message. In asking President Trump to be more like Elvis, I think she's imploring him to be a little more creative, to show compassion and to put on a show which entertains without threatening our rights.