November 3, 2020
I will go to bed tonight anxious, nervous, with a heavy heart, with so much uncertainty around who will be our next President, and when will we know. Leading up to the elections there were news reports of businesses boarding up, family members begging me to stay home, and friends asking why I went to work. My friends and family fear for my safety, especially now that I live in a battle ground state.
My worries drifted to our collective future. How do we heal after such an angry election? More importantly, how did we get here? To this level of division? Of course, this division has been at least a decade in the making, the culture wars, the “inside the Beltway bubble” lobbed at the Washington elite, the derisive “oh those liberal coastal elites” and then the characterizing U.S. states as Red States and Blue States as if we were tribes. Even my once apolitical sister is clear that she will defriend Trump supporters in real life not just on social media.
I know we can make our way to the centrist America I came to love. Left or right, conservative or liberal, Dem or Republican we can work together for a better City, State, and Country. We can bridge these divisions and we must heal. The world is watching.
Post-election, we will have a lot of work to do to build equitable neighborhoods, to address the affordable housing crisis crippling South Florida and as at least, one person likes to say we will build back better.
Kimberly T. Henderson
President & CEO
