Empowering One Billion Dreams with President Harris

Why backing her candidacy is about far more than politics

As of the moment I am writing, there are an estimated 1,162,388,733 girls under the age of 18 in the world, the vast majority of them girls of color.

There is a long list of things they still have to overcome, from sexual violence to education discrimination to employment discrimination to entrenched structures of power held by men. Girls of color have it particularly rough when we bundle in the legacies of racial inequality. Rates of horrors such as child marriage, sexual slavery, and oppression are shockingly high, particularly for girls in the developing world.

I believe that the future of humanity depends on this next wave of more than 1 billion girls growing up to believe that literally anything is possible for their future. If they can set their dreams high enough and have clear examples and pathways to follow to realize those dreams, they can transform their countries, their cultures, their families, and our future.

There are big structural and institutional changes required but they all begin in the dreams of those young girls.

How do we create a world in which we truly empower those billion dreamers to reach their full potential?

I have two young girls myself, ages four and seven, and last night we talked about how they could become President if they wanted and how it’s long overdue for the most powerful person in the world to be a woman. They were frankly surprised to hear that we’ve never had a woman President before since we’d never talked about that as a historical limitation. But they agreed it was ridiculous to think that only boys could become President. And I’m grateful that they feel that way and that we can now say that we could well be ushering in next year with a woman President about to take office.

I say this because too often we think about politics as a battle of short-term interests, only involving those who can vote and, too often, those with adequate money to influence the process. And yet, the status, visibility and power of the American presidency has implications for literally every single child in the world. They are part of this election, even if they have no vote. They all have skin in the game.

The lack of any woman in American history holding the Presidency, much less a woman of color who bridges multiple cultures, can limit the possible dreams for those billion girls who are drawing conclusions about the world before them.

In many ways, the legacy of electing a President Harris will be far more influential for those girls under 18 than the women (and men) over 18 whose beliefs and pathways have already been determined.

By sending a message to not just American girls but girls around the world that truly anything is now possible for them, we can give a lasting, multi-generational infusion of hope, possibility, and excitement to build a new kind of world. That message will outlast a dozen Democratic and Republican administrations. It will outlast virtually every piece of legislation that could be enacted in the next four years (since they are so often undone in the next wave).

It is a vote for the future the world needs. That future world is one in which women and men are co-equal, in which race no longer limits aspirations, and one in which the gifts of literally everyone are encouraged to blossom to their full extent.

A second Trump presidency is, at the root level, a return to the past. We’ve been there before. It would break no new ground. It would reinforce the millennia-old limitations on the dreams of those billion girls. It does not send a message of hope and possibility to send a rich white man back again to the White House.

But a President Kamala Harris?

That’s a gamechanger for those 1 billion girls and their 1 billion dreams that are just now forming and not yet weighed down by the past.

Electing her is not just about a set of policies in the moment; it’s about an evolution of consciousness of our world. It’s about something that deeper than left and right policies, deeper than which economic philosophies prevail, deeper than whether workers or oligarchs wield more power. It’s even deeper than preserving American democracy, as important as that goal is.

Electing Kamala Harris as President is about fulfilling the deeper mission of our country.

When immigrants of color (as both her parents were) can come to America, work hard and raise a girl to become the most powerful elected leader we have, it sets an example that literally anyone can follow.

That example is about a fuller expression of the human spirit. It’s about the liberation of women from millennia of fetters.

It’s about empowering one billion dreams that can rewrite tomorrow and the decade after that and the century after that.

That liberation is far more important than what happens on the border next year or the stock market the year after that or even in the latest war stirred up by despots clinging to power.

It is about greenlighting a rising tide of creativity, innovation, and love that will not be stopped until it has reshaped America and ultimately human civilization in a more peaceful (and prosperous) form.

It’s about the rising of the feminine to heal our communities, rebalance our institutions, and fulfill a larger mission of creating a society that truly works for all.

In the moment we have just entered, the choice is no longer about left and right. It’s about choosing the future over the past. It’s about choosing hope over fear.

Do we want to re-litigate the past and re-experience what an aggressively masculine approach to governance looks like or do we want to create a future that is sourced in deeper wisdom and in which women are fully embraced as equal?

Do we want those 1 billion girls to grow up with no sense of limitations of what they can accomplish?

If everyone who has a stake in this election could vote, the result would not even be close.

As a father of two girls, I know my answer.

I’m not just voting for the next four years. I’m voting for the next four generations.

And if we consider those billion dreamers who cannot yet vote, for me, there is only one choice: President Kamala Harris. Let’s make it happen.