Submitted by GZE Gamaliel Zavala Enriquez
Many reported on the one-year anniversary of the brutal Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Virtually nobody reported on the nearly quarter-century anniversary of endless war when the Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks which began the “Global War on Terrorism” with the U.S.-led military intervention. As a result, the world is less safe.
Those of us old enough to remember Sept. 11, 2001, will remember exactly where we were, who we were with, and what we were doing. Some of us, like myself, will remember exactly what we were thinking. As a first-generation undergraduate college student, I was thinking, why in the world are we being attacked? Who is attacking us? And in the coming days, I was thinking why in the world are we going to war?
In pursuit of those answers, I declared my international relations major. I decided that I would become a career diplomat, advocating for the United States’ values and ideals of human rights and democracy around the world. But what I did not know at the time was how much of a two-tiered society we had. A set of rules for the 1% and a completely different set of rules for the other 99%, which are not based on equality of opportunity.
College was more expensive than anticipated. As a result, I was forced to drop out and was admitted, unbeknownst to me, into the “School of Hard Knocks.” First, I became homeless as a result of the Federal Reserve Board dropping interest rates to nearly zero to help the U.S. economy after the 9/11 attacks. That initiated the housing bubble and made San Francisco even more expensive. Then, I lost my job in Las Vegas while working in retail banking and went through the criminal justice system as a result of the Great Recession.
“We need to move toward a political and economic system that places human rights, human dignity and human-centered capitalism at the center of public policy.”
I am sure that many of you can relate to this hardship. I was lucky enough to have great family and friends. I was also resilient and did not give up. I earned my Bachelor of Arts in political science and will graduate with a Masters in Public Administration and Policy from University of Nevada, Reno in 2025.
Since 2015, I have worked to elect many elected officials throughout the Silver State. With the benefit of hindsight and years of wisdom I have managed to connect the political dots. If higher education were viewed as a human right, accessible and cost-free to all, I would have graduated with my cohort, some of whom are at the State Department and the United Nations today.
If housing were viewed as a human right and universally accessible to all I would not have ended up homeless as so many Americans do. If the government created smart financial regulation to protect all, not just the privileged, then Wall Street CEOs who caused the economic crash would have gone to jail rather than having Main Street foot the bill.
Since the 1970s the political spectrum has been pulled to the extremes. Today in the duopoly that is the Republican and Democratic parties we have two faces of American capitalism. With the MAGA Republicans, we have white supremacist capitalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, patriarchy and a war on the working class. With the Democrats, we have a party of multiracial neoliberal capitalism, which seeks a kinder and gentler form of mass deportation and border militarization, and one that is even more aggressive in the imperial policies of the U.S. than even the Republican Party.
We need to have elected officials represent the interests of their constituents and stop pouring trillions of dollars into forever wars. We need to move toward a political and economic system that places human rights, human dignity and human-centered capitalism at the center of public policy. However, I do not feel that this is possible within the duopoly that is our two-party system.
This is why, in my personal capacity, I am a firm supporter and advocate of Nevada’s Question 3 as a necessary disruptor of a political and economic elite that has increased their wealth and power at the expense of the rest of us.
Nevada’s Question 3 is the strategic response to many of our local, state, national and international challenges which have had the proverbial “can be kicked down the road.” This is because rank choice voting has proven to end the dysfunction, the extremism and the inability to get positive results for us, the people, in America today.
But this will only happen by changing the incentive structure in Carson City and Washington, D.C. We need to open the space for Independent, Green, Forward, Libertarian and Socialist Party Candidates to run, legislate and counterbalance the duopoly that is the Republican and Democratic establishment. We change the system, we change the outcomes. Vote “YES” on Nevada Question 3.
Gamaliel Z. Enriquez earned a Bachelor of Science in political science from Arizona State University and is a current Masters student in public administration and policy at UNR. Enriquez served 10 years as campaign manager and activist across Nevada.
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