Democratic strategist Michael Ceraso at The Hill:
I continue to reject politics that reject people.
You have to understand, my mother suffered from bipolar disorder and struggled with drug addiction to self-medicate. I was removed from my home multiple times to live in the publicly funded California foster care system and with neighbors.
I remember a Republican keeping my mother in her home when she was too debilitated to work. Former Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) pushed Section 8 paperwork through the bureaucracy to keep her housed and safe.
And I remember my best friend and his immigrant parents, who had traveled from Mexico to the U.S. in the 1970s, as part of the community that cared for me and taught me to respect the experiences of others.
Now, I want to be clear: my best friend isn’t storming the Capitol. He has never condoned Republicans harassing gay people, women, transgender individuals, Asians, immigrants or Black people.
He knows that supporting Trump’s improprieties is difficult to reconcile, including the 34 felonyh convictions. But he strongly believes that Democrats cloak bad behavior, whereas Trump does not. Choosing between these options, he’d rather support the devil he knows.
In 2020, I was thrust into the middle of the George Floyd protests when I decided to run for Claremont City Council in California. My district, a quarter Latino and 10 percent Black, was at odds. The majority of Latino residents believed the defund movement was wrong and supported the police, while the majority of Black residents believed we needed to reduce the police force, which was telling.
More telling, though, were the mostly White liberals with Biden signs in their yards who supported the national defund movement yet spoke out against increasing housing stock to include low-income families and reducing homelessness through comprehensive care programs. To me, this was coded language to keep poor families — mostly Black and Brown — out of their community.
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Democrats have been isolating half the nation for nearly a decade, and it hasn’t worked. It’s time to write a new script.
After dinner, I asked my best friend if he ever considered not being my friend because of my politics. Sensing my insecurity, he said no, “because family sticks together, no matter what.”