Cindy Pollard
Newton
This weekend I hosted 12 friends and neighbors to watch Hillary Clinton’s announcement speech. The speech was everything I could have wanted — and more. What struck me the most about it was that she addressed the concerns of everyone in the room, including myself.
She said her candidacy was for “nurses who work the night shift.” I am a recently retired nurse who knows what it feels like to spend nights at work on your feet, coming home exhausted, and going right back in the next day and doing it again because you know it’s needed. She said her candidacy was for the people the Republican Party has turned their back on — gay couples who love each other. As a lesbian couple, my wife Gayla and I were not given basic equality but instead we had to fight for it. And we fought hard. Not every couple has their marriage license hanging on their wall, but we do because we had to work for it and we want to be reminded of the hard work that got us to where we are, but also as motivation to not stop fighting. And gaining the right to marry wasn’t just a relief in being able to openly love my wife, but it was also a relief because we got the other same rights that married couples have — I was able to join on Gayla’s health insurance to get a much needed hip replacement after retiring from my 40-year nursing career.
Hillary Clinton will fight for those who have worked hard, and I trust her to both protect the rights we have worked for and to make it easier for those hard at work to get ahead.