In 1968 there was a huge anti-war student movement coupled with a civil rights movement. These two movements backed 1 democratic candidate in the democratic primaries but that candidate didn’t win the majority of votes. As a result activists felt so fed up that they decided to protest the presidential election leaving the Republican candidate Nixon to win. 

Nixon had campaign as the “Law and Order” candidate who would be able to put an end to all the protests and civil unrest in the streets. 
Years later Nixon’s top aide, John Ehrlichman, would admit in an interview: (the following is a direct quote):

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. … You understand what I’m saying?

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. … We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Nixon’s rhetoric about black people and anti-war activists set him up to be able to jail, exile, and even kill activists with full approval from the general public. It also set the stage for Regan’s “war on drugs” and all the subsequent policies that appealed to outraged white voters and resulted in the mass incarceration of our communities of color.

Trumps rhetoric is far more hyperbolic, far more overtly racist, and far more erratic than Nixon’s was.
And it’s not “just words”. 
Because those words build the story we tell our society to justify the way our government treats its citizens. 

If we walk out on this election we set back any progress we’ve made on civil rights, women’s rights, workers rights…etc. 
If we sit out this election we don’t bring the revolution. We sink deeper into a denial of our collective history, misinformed outrage, and life-wrecking public policy. 
And we leave the most vulnerable and least represented among us to bear the fallout. 

Go Vote. 
#GetInvolvedStayInvolved #NeverTrump #Imwithher