Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Once you've met these girls living on a garbage dump in El Salvador, it's hard not to
take them along when you enter the voting booth.
based on more than simply, “Am I better of today than I was four years ago?”
Travelers recognize that the results of an election here in the US can have
a greater impact on poor people half a world away than it does on middle-
class American voters. My travels have taught me that you don't want to be
really rich in a terribly poor world. With this in mind, I think of it not as
noble or heroic, but simply pragmatic to bring a compassion for the needy
along with me into the voting booth. I like to say (naively, I know) that if
every American were required to travel abroad before voting, the US would
i t more comfortably into this ever-smaller planet.
Share lessons, expect more from your friends, and don't be afraid to ruin
dinners by bringing up uncomfortable realities. In a land where the al icted
and the comfortable are kept in dif erent corners, people who connect those
two worlds are doing everyone a service. Al ict the comfortable in order to
comfort the al icted. By saying things that upset people so they can declare
they'd i ght and die for my right to be so stupid, I feel I'm contributing to
the fabric of our democracy.
Get involved. After observing alarming trends in other countries, it's easier
to extrapolate and appreciate where small developments in our own society
may ultimately lead—whether it's the impact of a widening gap between rich
and poor, a violation of the separation of church and state, the acceptance of
