TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHOENIX
Two years ago, many of us sent a letter to The Phoenix urging support for Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. Sadly, many of the fears we stated in that letter have come to pass. We warned, “If Trump is elected he will remake the Supreme Court in ways that will permanently permit big money to dominate politics and voter suppression to grow in importance.” (And we didn’t even mention that Roe v. Wade would be on the chopping block.)
In the wake of Trump’s outrageous characterization of some of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville as “good people” and his claim that the 2900 dead Americans in Puerto Rico “never happened,” our fears about his racism appear understated: “Trump’s racism and misogyny have given license to the worst elements in American culture and our body politic. If he wins, such people will be even more emboldened. Our nation will begin moving backwards undoing over 50 years of progress.”
Two years later, there is only one way to stop Trump’s march towards creating a dangerously authoritarian nation: to flip at least one of the houses of Congress, which means, no matter what our misgivings, we must vote to elect Democrats.
We urge everyone reading this letter who is 18 years or older and eligible to make sure they are registered to vote. We urge everyone who can choose where they vote to make sure to vote in their home district, as the local (Swarthmore) Congressional District as well as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Senate seat are both pretty secure for the Democrats.
Anyone who thought it wouldn’t matter whether Trump won in 2016 knows now that it definitely did matter. Think of how much more damage he could do if neither house of Congress flips. This is not the time for political purity — this is a time to hold back the tide of racism and fascism. Please vote as if our lives depended on it — they do!
Becky Prentice Carel ’64 Marion Colby Foster ‘64
Robin Smith Chapman ’64 Rosita Sarnoff ’64
Mike Meeropol ’64 Carol Beattee Willis ’64
Friedner Wittman ’64 Alan Spielman ’64
Cathe Winn Wright ’64 Gavin Wright ’65
Meg Hodkin Lippert ’64 Barbara Edwards Banet ’64
Lydia Razran Stone ’64 Sharon Bertsch McGrayne ’64
Terese Loeb Kreuzer ’64 Peggy Colvin Tropp ’64
John C. Pollock ’64 Archer Dodson Heinzen ’64
Sue Zinn Eisinger ’64 Anne Cochran Sloan ’64
Peter Freedman ’64 (Rev) Janet Kelly Brown ’64
Kerry Kelly Novick ’64 Dick Barrett ’64
Bernard Beitman ‘64 Bernie Banet ’64
Samuel M. Worthington ’64 Alan Feingold ’64
Nancy Nickerson Stassinopooulos ’64 Michael and Rickie Gross ’64
Andrea Hoff Knox ’64 Lila Towle ’64
