Please vote today.  But really.  If I can ask you to do only one thing all year: please vote.

Voting is an important role that we need to fulfill as active citizens in our community.  Voting is a way to show politicians and special interests that we are here.  If you want a good reason why politicians don’t listen to the youth, take a look at the percentage of us that vote.  I’ll tell you it’s not a pretty statistic.  Why should they pay attention if we don’t elect them?  It’s doubly disappointing when you compare that with the percentage of us who choose to gripe over the current state of things and yet don’t take the small action to change it (by all means possible and that includes getting out the vote).

This is not to say that voting will change everything all at once.  But it will work towards showing politicians that we are paying attention.  They haven’t had to worry about that enough as of late and I’d like to see the pressure turned up considerably.

The one thing I’ll leave you with before I head off to vote is: the resources for being a smart voter are available.  The San Francisco chapter of The League of Pissed Off Voters has a great guide to break down the choices for you.  If you vote anything like me, this is pretty much the only guide you need.

Finally, I personally encourage you to vote for John Avalos for Mayor and Ross Mirkarimi for Sheriff in San Francisco.  Both have been great supporters of progressive movements while on the SF Board of Supervisors.  Mirkarimi is featured in a video I shot a while back and you’ll get a feel for where his heart is at.  He has a great little soundbite and I’d be very happy with him running the jails here.

Kyle