Letter: Let's rally around those who care for our earth, people, and community

The next election is around the corner and civic life in America is as fragile as our generation has ever seen it. Let's decide now to rally around leaders who prioritize care for others above personal gain or party lines. Let's rally around caring for our earth, for people, for communities. This feels like a new idea because care challenges the perverse rationale of greed and the foolish habit of partisan divisions we are so used to. We must actively resist the messages of the market that say we need to stay hooked on getting more things to be happy. We must remember that it is through belonging and care that we are strong and happy. Children know this!

We are right now lost in a forest of greed and loneliness. We must find our way back to the America we want: a place for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - for all. We must remember how to be in community, how to listen across difference, how to care for strangers, how to welcome the weary immigrant and the lost child. We must remember we are a human nation first, made by and for our best human selves. We are not just Corporate America, not just political parties, not just gender or race identities, not just projections of ourselves on Facebook. If you are not welcome, I am not welcome.

Join me this year in actively supporting ANY brave leader running - or already in office - who fights for the value of care at the local level all the way to Washington. Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders. John McCain. Brian Sandoval. Wendy David. Elizabeth Warren. Jerry Brown. So many others who are in office, who are throwing their names into races, and those who have yet to surface. Let's find those people to support. Let's support and celebrate those leaders in office who are brave against coercion or temptation - regardless of party.

Let's tell the parties to get out of the business of dividing us. To do this, we can each support brave, generous people across party lines, even if we don't agree with everything they stand for. Let's vote for the most important things. Let's show love will win this year. Let's go win elections with the ideas that bind us and free us.

Annie Davidson
South Lake Tahoe, Calif.