What does democracy mean to you? Why is a healthy democracy important?
Hi, my name is Kim Wedgeworth. And my democracy journey began after the January 6th insurrection. I watched in horror how outnumbered the Capitol police were in protecting the 2020 presidential election result. How rioters scaled the wall, pushed back, brigades broke windows, assaulted officers erected a gallow on the steps of the Capitol. One of the images that terrorized me today is the person parading through the halls of our state capitol with the confederate flag when eight months earlier after the outrage of an unarmed black man being murdered by a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes until he expired. During the height of a global pandemic. Protesters descended on the Capitol to demand justice mothers, young and old black white Asian native American assembled together to say enough only to be met with police in riot gear, rubber bullets, tear gas. A military response on peaceful citizens. These differences, this political climate of division, the misinformation, COVID-19 to mask, to not mask, to vaccinate. Rent is too damn high. The homeless, the mentally ill you vow these gun violence, our world is on fire. I heard someone say democracy is fragile. The truth is democracy is the will of the people. It is the laws that governs us enshrined in the constitution. Democracy should reflect and represent the people. My mission is to become an accomplice to justice, to magnify the voice of the marginalized and the under represented in a representative democracy to quash the hypocrisy in the greatest experiment invented democracy. Democracy is the American dream for some. But it is a, it is a nightmare for others and it should not be. So we the people have the power to create the democracy. Our forefathers envision even in a time when it wasn't for all democracy is for everyone. And we get to experience that not only hope for it, we get to create it. And this is my fight, my pledge as I join with many other coalitions to ensure democracy for the future of generations coming before us. A democracy that guarantees their inalienable rights to peace in the pursuit of happiness. However, they decide to define the my happiness.
