#RockTheVote: What’s At Stake This Election Year
Here are the issues that mostly impact Black women.
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Exercise Your Right - Pretty soon, the Obamas will be leaving the White House and a new president will take his place to govern our nation — and it’s the Black female vote that will get them there. Hopefully, your candidates, for both president and local and state elections, care about the issues that impact us. Here are just a few issues that could be keeping you up at night. By Kellee Terrell(Photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)
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Health Care - Under health care reform, more young people — including Black millennial women — are insured thanks to being allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26. Even better: the uninsured rate dropped 6.8 percentage points among African-Americans. But keep in mind that every GOP candidate has said they would abolish health care reform. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
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LGBT Equality - Our generation is one that is much more accepting than the ones before us. With that brought marriage equality, but more work needs to be done to ensure that LGBT Americans, including Black lesbians and transwomen, can not be fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation/gender identity and to protect them from violence and bullying in schools. (Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
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The AIDS Epidemic - African-American women and Latinas continue to be disproportionately impacted by the HIV epidemic, especially those ages 13-34. Our communities need better access to treatment, prevention methods like pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) and better education around the disease. Does your candidate have an HIV/AIDS plan?(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
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Student Loans - The cost of higher education is getting higher and higher, which means more and more students are graduating with a degree and mounds of mounds of debt that they cannot afford. This rings especially true for young African-American women, who are going to grad school in droves. (Photo: Allison Shelley/Getty Images for DKC)
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Race Relations - Given growing racial tensions in this country, especially concerning African-Americans, Muslims and immigrants (mostly Latino), it’s important to vote for a candidate who promotes diversity, inclusion and gender equality (because not people of color are just men). Does your candidate promote that or violence and hatred?(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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Clean Energy and Water - Whether it’s global warming, clean energy, pollution or lead poisoning in urban areas (including toxic water like in Flint), the environment is a serious issue that goes beyond white hippies. This directly impacts Black lives and young people. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
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Gun Safety - Whether it’s the mass shootings in Newtown or the hundreds of senseless lives lost in Chicago, gun violence in America is officially a crisis and many young people believe in the need to address it. We need to require background checks to purchase guns, a move that many Republican candidates do not support. (Photo: Warren Little/Getty Images)
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The Economy - As Black women, how can we live the American dream without a job? POTUS has done a good job increasing jobs and the economy, but will that continue when a new leader comes into office. Not to mention, what about raising the minimum wage, mandatory sick leave, paternity/maternity leave and the gender pay gap? (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
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Police Brutality - A USA Today/Rock the Vote poll found that, among millennials, police brutality is one major issue that they need the future president to care about. Police brutality isn't just a Black man's issue, but ours as well. Think Rekia Boyd and Sandra Bland.(Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
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Women’s Health and Abortion Rights - One of the scariest issues at stake is women’s health and abortion rights, which directly impacts young women of color who have higher rates of abortions, unplanned pregnancy and STI/HIV rates. Who you vote for, especially on your local and state level, can greatly impact your access to women’s health care, an issue that many Republicans have shown they are not here to support. (Photo: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)