We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible Book Review

The core of any democracy is not just the right to vote. It is that every voice and every vote is counted, regardless of the specific details of the person who stepped into the ballot box.

We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible, by Texas Gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke was published just a few weeks ago.

O’Rourke does more than advocate for the idea that without voting rights, our nation would crumble. He tells the story of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon. Dr. Nixon was the son of a formerly enslaved man and an early civil rights activist. Weaving throughout the history of the state (and his experience speaking to voters), he shares the narratives of others who have also stood up for free and fair elections.

I enjoyed this book. With his usual eloquence, openness, and direct nature, he is challenging the reader to stand up for this nation and our future. While having an eye for what might come, O’Rourke is looking to the past and lessons learned from the mistakes of our forebears.

Every once in a while, there comes a book that is so essential that it becomes a required read for every American and everyone who believes in democratic values. This book is one of them. Speaking from the heart, he reminds the reader that there is still time to avoid the precipice ahead. That is if we heed the warning signs.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely. I would also argue that it is one of the best books of the year.

We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible is available wherever books are sold.

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Flashback Friday: Celebrity Fit Club (2005 to 2010)

Basic medical advice tells us that carrying extra weight on our body creates health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, etc. The larger problem is that in our culture, there is such a focus on body size (i.e. thin) that it is more about fitting in than being healthy.

Celebrity Fit Club aired on VH1 from 2005 to 2010. Like its non-celebrity reality show sibling, The Biggest Loser, the purpose of the show was for the contestants to lose weight. The only difference is that those involved in this show are famous. Throughout the series, they are put through their paces and weighed at the end of each episode.

Working with a nutritionist, a psychologist, and a trainer, each competitor is given the opportunity not just to lose physical pounds. They are encouraged to work through the issues that have led them to their current state.

Like all reality television, there is the usual question of what is “real” and what is scripted for the cameras. But what I think makes it different is that this program is that it shows that those who work in show business don’t always look like we think they should look. Like all humans, if they drink and eat excessively without some sort of physical activity, they will put on the pounds.

Do I recommend it? Maybe.