Yogis for Kamala

aka Lotus for Potus :)

Hello friends!

I want to let you know about an upcoming fundraiser I’m co-hosting with my beautiful friend, the luminous Kate Duyn, in support of Harris/Walz 2024. If you’ve been wondering where the Yogis for Kamala zoom was, here it is!

You are invited to a demure, mindful Zoom meeting.

When: Sep 5, 2024 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUvfu2uqD4rGNNy9TA4ReQG7AZgXjBXATFL

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

If you’re in Los Angeles, you can join us in person at Kate’s gem of a studio Light on Lotus Thursday, September 5th, 6:15-8:15pm (50 spots and going fast, please go here to register for the in-person portion of our event). You can also join us at the time of the event on the Yogis Anonymous Facebook fan page because we’ll be going live there as well, and maybe you’d like to join the 174k yogis from around the globe and practice together from all different time zones - it’s going to be a party, woot! I will be leaving the class up on the fan page after the event is over, for those of you who can’t join us live (I am not recording the zoom). If you’d like to attend over zoom or Facebook, you can send your donations to:

Venmo: Ally-Hamilton-5

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yogisanonymous

The suggested donation is $50, but it all adds up so if that isn’t doable, please donate what you can. 100% of the proceeds will go to Harris/Walz, and we will let everyone know what we raise on the fan page after the event. If you are excited about this and need nothing further (like my strong feelings about why I am supporting this ticket which you will find below), please register for the zoom or in-person event and make your donation. We look forward to being with you, and as ever, we will be teaching our hearts out. I’d love to see you there!

Kate and Ally, the remix.

I understand these are heated times and we may not agree on everything. Even in the Los Angeles yoga community there is division, and while it’s sad, it isn’t surprising. I want to tell you why I am wholeheartedly throwing my support behind this ticket. There are two viable choices. We can talk about how a two-party system isn’t serving us some other time, because that isn’t changing in the next two months, and a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for a man and a ticket I find abhorrent and reprehensible. I’m going to get to all the reasons I am delighted to do anything and everything I can to get Harris/Walz elected, but first, I’m going to tell you why I find DJT and his cohorts unfit to lead in every conceivable way. DJT promised he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overthrow Roe v. Wade, and that is one of the only promises he kept in the four years he was in office.

Since Roe was overturned, we can clearly see what happens when we “leave it to the states”- in 22 states there are such strict abortion bans girls and women who go to the ER dealing with ectopic pregnancies and other emergencies are being told to wait in the parking lot until no one can deny their lives are at stake. The laws are written so poorly doctors are afraid they’ll lose their medical licenses if they give girls and women the life-saving healthcare they need, even in cases when there is no doubt the pregnancy isn’t viable. There are states with no exceptions for rape or incest. There are Republicans running for office who are openly in support of a national abortion ban.

If you doubt any of this, please see: Kate Cox and Hadley Duvall, and you will see their stories and many, many others. Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina, running to be governor and ENDORSED by DJT is in favor of a national abortion ban, thinks women should pull their skirts down, and wishes we could go back to a time when women did not have the vote. DJT endorses this man. In my lifetime, I never imagined I would see this, nor any ticket that is so openly and outrageously misogynistic. We have a “man” running to be Vice President who thinks “childless cat ladies” shouldn’t have their votes counted the way people with children do, because they don’t have a physical stake in the future of the country (tell that to all the 18-year-olds we send to fight wars). He believes the purpose of post-menopausal women is to look after their grandkids (Michelle Obama would like a word). For me, a ticket that is openly hostile to girls and women is an affront and insult to all of us, and I will fight to the death against that ideology. Anyone who can get past this and support a ticket that demeans and endangers girls and women is not a person I can understand. Full stop.

Here are many of the reasons I am delighted to support Harris/Walz. Vice President Harris has done incredible work around maternal health:

“As a Senator, Vice President Harris introduced the Maternal CARE Act and the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, which would provide significant additional resources to address the crisis. This maternal health work by Vice President Harris and other Congressional leaders is now a key component of the Build Back Better Act, which will expand access to maternal care and make unprecedented new investments to drive down mortality and morbidity. President Biden and Vice President Harris call on the Senate to swiftly pass Build Back Better, and make these reforms a reality for America’s families.” You can read more here about what they set out to accomplish, and here to see how it has played out. These are good links for anyone who asks what she has accomplished as vice president (more coming below).

She is vehemently pro-choice, trusts women, and supports Planned Parenthood. She is also sickened by gun violence deaths in our country even though she is a registered gun owner. She wants universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons. Having two school-age children of my own, watching school shootings since well before Sandy Hook and Uvalde as we do NOTHING lasting to fix this issue year after year is something that makes me hold my head in my hands on a regular basis.

And while we are here, it seems many people don’t understand the role of VP. The president sets the agenda, the vice president is in the background to support or advise if asked, and even then, it is the president who makes the ultimate decisions. Aside from executive orders which are not allowed for the majority of issues we vote on, the House and Senate need to agree or at least work together in order for any administration to get anything done. For example, there was a bipartisan border security bill brought to the Senate floor for a vote in May, just a few months ago. Every Republican senator voted against it. Then they turned around and gleefully asked their constituents why VP Harris hasn’t “fixed the border” knowing full well they just blocked a bill that would have helped.

But here is something she has been able to accomplish, and it’s one of the more creative and substantive ways we might actually start to ease this crisis: “In May 2021, Vice President Harris launched a Call to Action for Northern Central America that challenged U.S. corporations to invest and create economic opportunity in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.  To date, the Call to Action and the Partnership for Central America (PCA) have galvanized more than $4.2 billion in private sector commitments to create economic opportunity in northern Central America.” You can read more here. Investing in these countries and creating opportunities for people so they don’t feel the need to flee is easily one of the best things we can do.

And by the way, we’ve had an immigration crisis in this country for decades that no administration has been able to solve. No one person can magically “fix it.” When people ask “what has she been doing the last 4 years” they are simply showing they do not understand how our government works, and they have not taken the time to Google what she has been accomplishing, with the power she’s had. Or they’re being disingenuous on purpose, the same way DJT mispronounces her name on purpose.

We haven’t seen her as president yet. We haven’t seen what she can or will do when she is the one setting the agenda, but I have high hopes. I know for sure it will be vastly better for everyone in this country and everyone globally if she is our president. If DJT gets in, the horror for girls, women, Black people, Brown people, gay people, trans people, literally anyone who isn’t a straight white man, is not something I want to see. And the horror for people everywhere, not just in our country, but worldwide is unthinkable. You want a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the unfathomable loss of innocent civilian life? He told Netanyahu to “finish it” and “get it done quickly.” You think he’s capable of nuance and diplomacy and can get the hostages home? I have zero faith in him because he doesn’t really care. He isn’t even kind to his own children. How about Ukraine? I think we know how DJT feels about Putin, he loves himself a cozy dictator. If you think my heart doesn’t break for all innocent people suffering everywhere in this world then you don’t know me. This is not the world I want for any of us, or for our children. I want to elect people who care.

The problems in our country and in the world at large require serious people who understand empathy and introspection, and have an ability to communicate in a meaningful way. If you think things are going to get better for anyone under that man, I’m not sure what else I can say. There is not a shred of compassion or decency in him, no hope of healing divisions inside our own country, no hope at all, just more hatred and vitriol. He cares about no one but himself. 

Lastly - and I’m going to say it like I see it - there are a lot of folks who seem to have woken up with fresh Bambi eyes over the last several months, and just figured out where they live. The United States has the 3rd largest military in the world, and is considered the world’s most powerful military since the end of the Cold War. America has always believed itself to be the "policeman of the world” and has always supported, entered, or not entered wars around the globe based on its own best interests, whether those interests are measured in desirable resources, protecting democracy, or helping its allies defeat those seeking to destroy them. As such, the U.S. has certainly supported atrocities across the globe, or stayed out of areas where devastating things are happening to innocent civilians including genocide and apartheid - see also the Congo and Sudan.

We stole this land from Indigenous Peoples. We built this land on the backs of slaves. White men have always been at the top. We considered Black men three-fifths as valuable as white men, had Jim Crow laws and segregation. We didn’t give white women the vote until 1920 thanks to women’s suffrage, that finally happened with the 19th amendment, but it did not include all women, because again, racism. “Black women, Native American women, Asian American women, and women from other racial and ethnic minority groups were discriminated against for 45 more years until the passage of The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The VRA afforded crucial protections to Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BIWOC) voters. And, women with disabilities only gained protections in 1990 with the Americans with Disabilities Act.” Read more here.

If you just discovered James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and bell hooks amongst many others over the last 10 months - I mean, welcome to reality, I guess. It isn’t pretty. The only way to make things better is to work within the system we have and keep fighting for better. And we are getting better, though it’s hard to believe. There are fewer and less lethal wars now than at any time before in history. Does that make the violence and heartache we see everywhere any less horrific? Of course not. But it does show that we are getting better over time. 

A huge part of what has and is going wrong is that too many people are not engaged and not paying attention. I get it, they don’t feel represented, they don’t think the government works for them, they’ve decided everyone is corrupt so fuck it. The thing is, our government doesn’t work the way it should if people don’t engage, and not just every four years to elect a president, but all the time - at the local level and the state level, too. Politicians are supposed to represent their constituents, but if their constituents aren’t really paying attention, holding them accountable and voting them out, then…this is what you get.

We have a lot of work to do to become the country we say we are. And we can’t do that work if we’re in-fighting and screaming at each other. I don’t know what’s going to happen with a Harris/Walz administration, but I’ll tell you I have hope for the first time in a long time. I love the $6000 child tax credit for the first year of life, the investment in needed housing, the 25k down for first-time homeowners, the broadband so kids everywhere can have access to education and not just those who are lucky, the commitment to protect Social Security and Medicare, to treat our veterans with respect, to put a cap on prescription drugs, make healthcare affordable for everyone, do away with price gauging, and so much more. That isn’t socialism, that’s compassion. I want to elect people people who think everyone ought to be able to love who they love. And my son grew up in a bathroom with tampons because he has a mom and a sister. He’s just fine. God knows I’m not worried about that. Let’s give our kids free breakfasts and lunches at public schools, and put an end to school shootings. Let’s get back to something that feels like caring about each other. 

You don’t have to agree with me and you don’t have to support this fundraiser, of course, but I wanted to be very clear about all of my thinking on this.

I’m sending you love. Hope to see you on September 5th, and hoping for a more loving world for all of us, sooner than later.

P.S. This is not my essay of the week. This is just my fundraiser announcement :)