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Election Day, 2022

Martha Madrigal
3 min readNov 8, 2022

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Etsy

Michael Moore created an Election Day playlist I’m quite enjoying. We voted by mail, confirmed our ballots were recorded on 11/3. And now we wait.

We’re waiting to hear about the fate of our democracy. This is the first election since the insurrection. I see a clear and stark choice between potentially saving democracy and a certain further decent into fascism. Democracy is only assured by agreement. It’s taken away by agreement, too.

I consider myself a pragmatic optimist, among other things. I do not have the luxury of ignoring politics, and neither does my partner. It isn’t we who make our lives political, it’s those who benefit from racism, classism, cis-hetero-normativity, and the entrenched patriarchy. They decide our lives are political with their claims that our lives have less value than theirs, and that we “deserve” fewer rights by virtue of our respective identities.

Those who decry identity politics amuse me. We wouldn’t ever have to even mention the identities that set us apart if y’all didn’t set apart our fucking identities! We wouldn’t be fighting for what so many love to dismiss as “special” rights if equal rights were guaranteed to all — they are NOT. No matter how many dog whistles you carry in those cargo pockets, like “playing the race card” for instance, you are the one creating the divisions by Othering those who don’t look, love or…

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Martha Madrigal
Martha Madrigal

Written by Martha Madrigal

Trans Artivist/Writer/Humorist ~ co-host of “Full Circle (The Podcast) with Charles Tyson, Jr. & Martha Madrigal.” Rarely shuts up.

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