Sylus Smith for Your Democracy Story

Speaker: Sylus Smith

Sylus Smith: For so much of human history. The way that we have responded to conflict, disagreement has had to have been violence. It wasn't even a choice. People at the top have said you will be crushed if you disagree and people at the bottom have either had to take that or they've had to organize and struggle to resist. But today, um throughout much of the world, unfortunately, not all of it, we've been given the opportunity to do something better, to do something different uh to come together and to peacefully exercise the right to vote as equal citizens, regardless of our standing in society, regardless of our standing amongst our peers, regardless of our standing amongst uh people of a higher or lower social class. And through that, we now finally have the opportunity to resolve change peacefully, to resolve change in a way that genuinely reflects the desires of large swaths of the population instead of simply whoever was willing to pick up arms and decide the future for themselves and for everyone else in the process. So to me, democracy is really been our best hope. It's been our hope to change the world for the better ever since it was first established. And it continues to be our best hope to this very day, no matter how radical or how near to the present and status quo. Our ideas might or might not be. Once we get to the point in which we can only resolve them violently, oftentimes, we find that the best solutions are now gone. Sometimes it's been out of necessity that we've had to resort to this. But by preserving a healthy democracy, by investing in shared community, by developing these bonds of trust and respect and genuine care for one another's well being. We can escape these worst impulses, we can escape these worst, these worst crimes. And we can finally give way to a better society where people, regardless of their positions can come together and they can achieve something. It doesn't matter what they're trying to achieve. Just the very idea that they could do that without having to fight and die is an immense step forward for all of humanity.

Sylus Smith: Pretty much my entire life. Um, my dad has had to work an absurd amount of hours, um, far beyond, uh, 40 or 50 with, uh, quite a unfortunate degree of regularity. Um, on more than a few occasions I found him, uh, randomly passed out on a couch or even the floor, um, because he had had to have worked, uh, 60 or even 70 hours in a single week in a single week earnings just enough through that to support two kids and to pay for rent, to pay for food, to put on the table. And it's just was never right, not to me. Um, not to really anyone I think who I've ever described that to. Um, and ultimately, that's the way it is because a great many people benefit from that system. Um, a system in which there are people working, uh, struggling to survive. But we can change that and we can only change that because there are systems in place which give people regardless of their power right now, the equal, right, the unquestionably equal right in to decide who they're going to be represented by, to decide what they're going to vote for in a given ballot initiative to decide how they want their future and their country's future to look. But we only have that right by being able to participate in government, we only have the ability to participate in government through our vote, through our ability to talk to elected officials, through our ability to observe how they vote, how they act and how other organizations they're connected to May act. And so at the essence of it all, at the end of the day, what has always been the most important thing for me is trying to use that power that I have been given that hundreds of millions billions of people throughout all of history have been denied. Um And who have had to suffer like my father without any recourse to be able to use the power that I do have uh as a citizen in a country with democracy has always been the most important thing to me. Uh It's always been something that has driven me to try to get more involved, to look for volunteer positions, to look for meetings. Because at the end of the day, we have a very unique opportunity. Very few other people will ever get to experience this chance to actually try and make a better world. But we can only do that by standing up for and investing in our democracies and in the communities which actually support that

Sylus Smith: No matter how equal one vote may be the resources to get that vote, the resources to stop that vote, the resources to get a bunch of other people together for that vote, that will never be equal. So long as there is money in politics. So long as there are uh un nontransparent uh opaque institutions, guiding uh the decisions of political figures, guiding who gets to meet with who, who gets to hear from who. And so the only thing that we can do to protect our democracy in the long run is for Congress and for the presidency to step up and to push against money in politics, to push for transparency in all levels of government action. And most importantly to ensure that lower levels of government influenced by these actions cannot work against the interest of getting every citizen out there to vote and getting them all to be able to organize together and talk together about how they want to vote about why they want to vote that way. We have to fight hard for this today.