Elena Blogs for a Change

Dear Hillary Clinton, My name is Elena, and I am 12 years old. I currently live in California, and am in the seventh grade. I have been a tremendous fan of yours since 2008 when you ran against President Obama in the Primary Election. My parents would gather the family, (then just my Mother, Father and I) and sit in front of a very old antenna TV to watch the Democratic debates and convention. I’d like to think that I, only 4 years old at the time, would speak with them intelligently about the political issues being addressed among the candidates, but it was not so. I barely understood what half your words meant, much less the importance of the event taking place on the screen. It all sounded awfully boring to four year old me, but I didn’t care. I liked to watch. Why? Because I thought you were great. Of course, I didn’t understand how great at the time, but pretty great. Great enough for me to sit at the table and draw detailed pictures of you in your orange pantsuit. ...

It was hard to wake up to the news this morning that America chose Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. We did have a few bright spots, though: 1- Nevada turned blue. 2- Nevada elected the first Latina senator, Catherine Cortez Masto 3- We elected some great new women senators: Kamala Harris from California, Tammy Duckworth, Illinois and hopefully Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire. Maybe one of them will become president one day?!? Maybe there's hope because if you look at this map on how young people voted, it is clear that they would have given us a different president. Here we are at the beginning of the evening when we still thought Hillary's path to the White House would look like this: Imagine if we didn't have the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton (like Al Gore in 2000) would be our president because she won the popular vote by more than 200,000 votes (and counting). Maybe it's time to consider whether we should have an El...

We are so proud to be part of a large group of volunteers who came from places outside of Nevada to help the local Democrats get out the vote. As we compared notes with other volunteers, we started asking them why they came. Why did they take time away from work and their regular lives? The answers were always heartfelt and very moving. For example, Leland from Alameda (a gay activist) and Pat from Grass Valley, CA met when they were working in Ohio in October to help with early voting. They became good friends and now are here in Reno together doing what they can to help. Pat remembers seeing John F. Kennedy speak and Leland remembers working for the 1972 Democratic candidate, George McGovern. We've met so many interesting people who came to Reno to work on the campaign. One of the teams we met was a mother, Jacqueline, and her daughter, Ashley, who are both from Sacramento. They have worked together in swing states since Obama first ran 8 years ago. Ashley has become a commun...

Day two of campaign canvassing was interesting. Why? Because we learned that looks can be deceiving. When we went door to door, we tried to imagine who would answer and how they might respond. At this one door, we were a bit anxious that maybe we had knocked on a Trump supporter's door.  There was loud music, the smell of cigarette smoking, and we could hear lots of men laughing inside. A bearded guy with a shaved head and a lit cigarette and baseball cap came to the door. As we introduced ourselves in the most polite way possible, we cautiously asked if he supported Hillary's campaign. To our surprise, he said that he was a BIG Hillary fan and that the other guy was an idiot. I think we were totally surprised. He went on to say that Trump did not respect people and that respect was really important to him. His stepson was our age and seemed very pleased that his stepfather was talking about his values in this way. After we left him, we both admitted that we were totally shoc...

It's a weekend day and ordinarily it would be filled with soccer games, family parties and chores, but our job this weekend is to help get out the vote to put Hillary Clinton in the White House. So we head to Reno, Nevada from CA because NV is a swing state with 6 electoral votes at stake. Little did we know that the very afternoon we we were arriving in Reno, Donald Trump was as well. How did we know? Well, we encountered a very proud Trump supporter with a t-shirt that said "Build the Wall, Trump." He then proceeded to tell us that Hillary Clinton didn't do anything as Attorney General and the conversation went downhill from there. His own mother had to correct him (as we did) that Hillary wasn't Attorney General but Secretary of State.  His mother was a Hillary supporter and she told us her son "didn't know anything" and that we should ignore him. He got even more in our faces, so we decided to take the high road as Michelle Obama has suggested ...

When Donald Trump first started campaigning for President, we all laughed. My 7-year old brother even perfected a hilarious impersonation of the Donald based on Trump's many speeches about his beautiful border wall. But now that Trump is the Republican nominee, we are more worried than amused. My little brother even asked my immigrant parents whether Trump would deport us to Mexico or Ireland!  I am far too young to vote and am glad Paulina and I can go to Nevada and try to make a difference there.  I am excited to help elect our country's first female president,  Hillary  Clinton. Paulina and I researched both candidates' positions on several issues we care about and it reinforced our commitment to help Clinton win.  Here's what we found in our research: 1)  Who is their running mate? Trump                                    ...