And the Job Begins!

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 in her speeches. We have to remember: "when they go low, we go high." So we shook hands and went back to canvassing in his apartment complex.

SIDEBAR: The Reno Trump rally resulted in Trump having to be taken off the stage because someone in the front rows screamed "gun." Once again another Trump gathering ended up in chaos. Our question: Is this really the way a presidential election is supposed to be-- and will that be the new normal in our lifetimes? We hope not!

That made us even more determined to go door to door and get on the phone and talk to people about how important it was to get to the polls. We had several conversations with people who thanked us for our work and we reminded them that even though we weren't old enough to vote, we felt it was important to be a part of getting the first woman in the White House and the more qualified candidate in office.

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My Letter to Hillary

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.

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