By Emily Cousins | Staff Writer
During Donald Trump’s presidency, people heavily criticized his every move — and rightly so. However, President Joe Biden should not be exempt from being held accountable, and neither should any politician, no matter their party.
Trump constantly created huge controversy, which is what led to strong social justice movements and demands to protect the rights of minority communities.
This was a step in the right direction, and everyone worked together to vote Trump out of office so that less damage would be done to these communities.
Biden becoming president could have been a continuation of everything human rights activists had been trying to do, but instead, everyone got comfortable and assumed Biden would be doing the right thing without accountability.
We still have families being separated at the border. We don’t have national police reform. COVID-19 is rampant across the United States, even more than it was a year ago. Student loans have still not been canceled.
This is not productive. Nothing has been accomplished. Biden was a better option than Trump, but that doesn’t mean we don’t expect Biden to be a leader and make changes rather than simply bringing things back to ‘normal.’ We don’t want normal. We want better. We want big changes.
If we don’t hold our politicians accountable, nothing will be done to better our communities. This goes beyond Biden. It also means paying attention to local government officials in our states and our counties.
Building our communities to care for each other and to create laws and programs in local interests is why local government is important and why we need to utilize our local politicians more. There’s a lot to be done nationally, but we also need to give back to the communities in which we live.
To accomplish that, we have to pay attention to local politics and participate in elections. The times when we don’t pay attention are when things happen under the radar — things that could have been avoided, or voted out, if we were invested in our surrounding communities.
When it comes to party division in the United States, we want whichever party we support to be in power, and we defend it, even if it is doing something wrong. We have to stop doing this. No politician is perfect. These people were elected to be public servants, and we need to make sure they are fulfilling that job description.
When we hold all politicians accountable, we can have a much healthier democracy, and we can also be better educated on the government and how we can improve our communities with its help.
