My Passion

I originally posted this on my page at Black Women in Europe as a way to describe who I am to the sisters. But I also thought it might be good to have posted here as well. Of course, it is a little different because I get to tinker with my own writing whenever I want.

My passion is politics.

I believe that all relationships are political and everything else is environmental. This mentality leads me to try to live my life according to the Golden Rule. The fact that I'm also a Scorpio lends itself to this way of thinking. I'll try to explain.

The sentence that describes Scorpio is "I want or I desire." (Each sun sign has its own sentence, ask me and I'll tell you yours.) If you add your Rising and Moon signs, you should have a short paragraph that truly describes you. My rising sign is Cancer and my moon is in Pisces. Makes me a triple water sign -- very emotional. But here's my full sentence: I want what I feel and i feel what I believe and I believe what I want. What this means to me is that I'll work as hard as I need to work to achieve my desire because I not only believe that my desire is right for me, but that it is a correct desire -- sort of like my thing with the Golden Rule. I try to live my life according to the Golden Rule. Since I know exactly how I want to be treated, it is much easier than you'd think.

So back to politics. The first time I voted was in 1968 for Bobby Kennedy in the California primary. I've never missed a vote since, because my mother said I had to vote as long as there were people in this world dying for the right to vote. I've worked on political campaigns, made campaign contributions and been part of administrations.

But I decided that the most important thing for African Americans is to be able to register to vote and that voter registration should be non partisan (the parties can fight for your vote, but getting on the voter rolls should have no barriers). Working here in Greece with the Overseas Vote Foundation, I'm making sure that those Americans who are currently active duty military or the dependent of an active duty military person or just a citizen living outside the US, can use the internet to register to vote and request an absentee ballot.

Our program (http://www.overseasvotefoundation.org) has received the support of the Secretaries of State (usually the top election officials at the state level) and the Pew Charitable Trusts and we're ready for 2008 and beyond. But we've done such a fantastic job of making it easier for overseas voters that we're going to start making it easier for stateside voters as well.