Think About It!

— by Xiomara Rodriguez

On Saturday, October 20, 2012, in Nevada we start early voting, and trust me, I truly encourage early voting.

But before you go out to vote, I have some very short stories that I want to share with all of you, Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  And I really hope you take your time to read them before you go out to vote and then go out and vote.

The first story is about a middle class family with two children, both parents work, and 2008 elections were there.  But just before the election the market dropped, the husband lost his job and life got really bad for this family.  They thought that because the wife had a job they could weather the storm.  In reality the wife was getting 75 cents for every dollar her husband made.  And these extra 25 cents an hour would have meant so much for this family.  But the pay was not there and gradually they lost everything. She tried getting a raise, but she was told that the raise had to go to her male counterpart because he had a family to support.  The question was what about her family. Wasn’t her family just as important.  After Obama was elected and the economy started to move forward, the husband found a good job, and gradually the family started back on the road to recovery.  Think about it.

My second story is a look into the future if the wrong person wins this election.  It is about a young couple that wanted a child so bad they did everything they could to get pregnant.  Then one day the husband was at work and the young wife had taken the day off because there was a carpet installer coming to their house to give them an estimate for new carpets.

When the young husband comes home, he finds his wife bleeding in the middle of the living room floor; she had been raped by the carpet man.  The husband takes her to the hospital, but because the country elected a man who was against Roe vs. Wade, because that law was repealed, and because Obamacare has finally been defeated, there is no day-after pill available to give to the young wife.

A month after the rape, the young husband is faced with the fact that his young wife is pregnant, pregnant by a man who is not him.  All the work and energy and money that went into working toward their pregnancy is gone. All the dreams about having a child of their own are gone.  What is there left for them to do.  Think about it.

She was 18, a virgin, full of ideas for her future; she wanted to be an attorney in international law.  That had been her whole life dream.  It was early in the morning and her first class in college was at 7:30 in the morning.  She suddenly feels someone behind her.  The next thing she remembers is waking all mangled.

She had been raped and never saw her assailant.  She is taken to the hospital.  In one moment, all her dreams were shattered.  Her ability to be able to lose her virginity to a man she loved was taken away from her.  This action affected her negatively—for the rest of her life.  Just think about it.

She was raised here in the USA and spoke English fluently with no accent.  Oh—but her  Spanish, that was another thing.  She went to school here.  She worked very hard to get the best grades.  Believe it because a 4.0 average is not easy to maintain from Kindergarten all the way to High School.  She wanted to be the first in her family to graduate from high school and go to college.  But then, reality struck.  When it came time to apply for college, she could not because, that’s when she finally found out she was undocumented.  Her family had brought her to this country when she was just six months old.  This is the only place she calls home and now there is no home for her, no college, nothing other than being afraid to be deported.  She can’t work and she can’t study.  She is in limbo.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel when the President signed the Deferred Act giving her hope to at least go to college and stay in her “COUNTRY” for two more years.  Think about it.

Equal pay for equal work is something that affects many families today, not only single mothers, but wives, mothers, single women; everyone.

Rape is something that affects husbands, fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters and the victim; it changes all their lives forever.

Immigration not only affects the Latino community, it affects every immigrant in this country.

When you go out to vote on Saturday, October 20, 2012, or anytime during the early election period, or on Election Day, think about it:  How would you react in any of the above circumstances?

Think about it!