I do what I love and I love what I do. Many have advised entrepreneurs to refrain from discussing politics and alienating potential customers. I disagree. My business, founded to fit my life, is based on my core values and beliefs.
We CANNOT separate politics from life – or business.
Politics impacts our lives in subtle ways and also in ways that literally slap us in the face. Laws impact how and where your children attend school, who teaches them, and how they arrive at school safely. Laws impact where you live and what resources are allocated there. Laws impact how you are required to be treated on your job and how financial institutions handle your money. Laws impact what offenses constitute crimes and how the offender is punished for harm done to you. Laws impact the air you breathe and the cleanliness of the water you cook with. Laws impact the prices you are allowed to charge and the taxes you are required to pay. We cannot live life – or run a successful business – devoid of politics.
Politicians used to disagree in sessions then go out to lunch together because they respected each other’s differences and respected each other as people. The BIG shift happened with the Tea Party Movement and the birthers who opposed Barack Obama, not on principle or policies, but on the color of his skin. The hatred, rudeness, and intentional separation began making its way BACK to the forefront of American politics. This division in US politics today is years in the making. The division and hatred in the country was here at its inception. (Stolen land, slavery, reservations, Jim Crow, etc.) Systemic racism is real.
For those of you who say politics should not be in the church, I would still be riding the back of the bus, entering businesses through the back door, sitting in the balcony in the movie theater, unable to eat lunch at certain lunch counters, unable to vote, and not allowed to live in certain communities if the pastors of the civil rights movements kept politics out of the pulpit.
There are Republican policies I agree with and Democratic policies I agree with. I believe that our two party political system doesn’t work for every American. We can have different policy views and still be connected. We can respectfully agree to disagree on many issues and still be connected. We absolutely CANNOT disagree on what constitutes a human being and how every human being deserves to be treated regardless of class, race, gender or sexuality, and still be connected. We can disagree on politics, but we cannot disagree on HUMANITY.
How can an election be fair when your candidate wins but rigged when your candidate loses in the same election in the same state? If you disagree with my stance on Donald Trump and MAGA (and the Proud Boys, and Stop the Steal, and Women for America First, etc.) and we are still connected on social media, DELETE ME NOW! I don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to argue or teach.
If you believe that this President and those elected officials had the right to disenfranchise millions of minority voters because they lost an election, DELETE ME NOW. The fact that the traitors only wanted to eliminate the presidential votes and not the votes of the winning Republicans lost says a mouth full. The fact that 60 court cases were thrown out for lack of evidence, including by Republican judges nominated by the president, tells me all that I need to know. The election was not illegal just because Donald Trump said it was. Trump is not God and America does not have a monarchy.
If you believe that this President is more powerful than our Constitution and that the Vice President should have fallen in line with him, DELETE ME NOW! If you supported the “March to Save America” and compared the siege on the Capitol to looting at Target after a Black Lives Matter protest, do us both a favor and DELETE ME NOW! (And for the record, I do not support anyone destroying the community by looting.) Reverse racism is not real.
If you believe that Black Lives Matter, Antifa and Democrats carried out this insurrection and not the MAGA supporters who planned it for weeks and were told by the President to be strong and storm the Capitol while speaking at a rally to denounce Joe Biden’s fair and legal victory, DELETE ME NOW.
If you are still a supporter of Donald Trump and believe that he should not be impeached and jailed for treason, DELETE ME NOW! There is no room to negotiate or compromise here. IAs a Founder and CEO, I absolutely don’t want to work with or do business with anyone with these harmful beliefs, so I am not afraid of how this post might impact my wallet – all money is not good money!
Humanity and equality are non-negotiable. I am not open for discussion. This is literal self-preservation!
I mean what I’m saying and I’m saying exactly what I mean. I stand by it wholeheartedly! Case closed.
Nicki Sanders, MSW, CEO, is a Career and Empowerment Strategist who helps high-performing women of color in management go from overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated to energized, well paid, and appreciated. Through Nicki Sanders Leadership Consulting, she also helps businesses recruit, hire, train, and retain great employees. Nicki has an extensive background in developing and managing successful programs and leading high-functioning multi-disciplinary teams. She is an accomplished professor, coach, trainer, and group facilitator who has combined her gift for authentic relationships, Master of Social Work degree, and over 20 years of diverse work experience to create a life she loves. Nicki is a lover of cupcakes, travel, and 80’s hip hop and R&B music.
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