Good afternoon, Lake County! My name is Charise Reynolds and like you, I am here to show the President that we will not stand idly by while he
attacks the Constitution and tries to systematically strip away our in-alien-able rights.
We have a president and a Republican congress who are – dismantling everything they can – as fast as they can. Trump allowed a group of unqualified, unelected individuals with no experience and no oversight, access to our private and sensitive information. They have conducted mass layoffs at the National Parks Service, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Education, the FDA, the CDC, the IRS, Head Start, and the Social Security Administration, just to name a few.
He’s cut funding for school lunches, food banks, and Meals on Wheels. He’s frozen federal funding for things like fire mitigation, the libraries, and
broadband. And, he continues to talk about cutting Medicaid and Social Security.
These actions have consequences that hit rural communities like ours the hardest. No head start means parents who can’t work and that means less
income spent in our local economy.
Cutting Medicaid doesn’t just affect the 50% of our community that is on Medicaid. It could also result in doctors leaving Lake County, which would
result in fewer choices, longer wait times, and even further distances to travel to find a doctor for the rest of us.
But Trump is not content to just cut funding. He’s also rolling back protections for women, the disabled, minorities, the elderly, and the LGBTQ
community. And, under the guise of voter fraud, he’s trying to make it harder for all of us to exercise our right to vote.
His actions have even criminalized a woman’s right to choose and have caused women to be denied access to healthcare to the point that women are literally dying in other states because of it.
But, perhaps the most troubling of all, even more so than the President’s gross overreach of power and blatant disregard for the constitution and judges, is the fact that because of Trump’s policies, ICE Agents are snatching people off of the street. These agents don’t wear uniforms, don’t identify themselves, and even wear masks to cover their faces. And this has inspired copycat criminals to grab people off the street in a similar fashion for the purposes of human trafficking.
Not only is Trump deporting and imprisoning non citizens without due process, he’s also rolling back protected statuses for non citizens who are
here legally. He directed ICE to revoke their visas simply because they exercised their (protected) right to free speech and said something that he
didn’t agree with.
We all need to care about this. Because a government that is allowed to deport non citizens and deny them due process can easily do the same to a
citizen. ‘Cuz if there is no due process, you just go straight to wherever they want to send you. They’ve already admitted to deporting one
individual due to an “administrative error” and are refusing to bring him back. That should frighten the hell out of everyone.
There have been so many troubling actions that it’s hard to know what to focus on. And it’s easy to become paralyzed. But we must fight the urge to
bury our heads in the sand and face our new reality head on.
The chaos is intentional. It is meant to both distract and desensitize us so that we lose our sense of outrage. If each act is more outrageous than the
last then we no longer bat an eye when the real atrocities start. And they’ve started.
We must pay attention and we must be intentional about how we go about reclaiming our power. We must support judges who are being attacked for
doing their jobs and standing up to Trump. We must engage disenfranchised voters and our youth. We must help to flip the House by donating our time and skills on targeted campaigns. And that means postcard writing, and calls to our representatives, and letters to the editor, and protesting to shine a light on issues, and educating people we know.
Focus on one step/one task at a time.
It is no longer acceptable to lament, “Someone needs to do something.” Or to ask, “What are the Democrats going to do?” It’s up to us. We the
people! We the people are the Democrats, the Republicans, and everyone in between who are fed up with a wanna be dictator taking away our civil
liberties and trying to dismantle the framework of our government!
If you don’t know where to start, take a look around you right now. Make a friend. Join the Lake County Democratic Central Committee. We’ll help you
get started.
Let’s all be the “someone” who does something before it’s too late.
By Charise Reynolds, April 5, 2025