#5SmartReads - June 21, 2022

Hitha on inflation, Senator Cornyn, and how to be an accomplice for equity

June 21, 2022

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“You could theoretically spend your summer sipping AriZona iced tea and eating Costco roast chicken while reading books — three products with stable prices.”

Hot inflation summer, anyone? (I got some great Kindle Unlimited recommendations if you need them). But I digress…

Leave it to the summer when we finally have vaccines for nearly all age groups to be the one that is strained by inflation. It’s certainly affected our travel plans this summer - lots of local trips to stay with grandparents and the occasional business trip via plane - and I can only hope we tamper inflation before we contend with a major recession.

I’m by no means a financial expert, but I highly recommend these wise women to follow and learn from - @herfirst100k, @farnooshtorabi, @moneywithkatie.

First things first - go subscribe to She Pivots podcast, because it's excellent and inspiring and motivates me almost as much as my Fall Out Boy playlist.

Did you subscribe? Good. Now start with this episode.

McBride Sisters’ sparkling wine is our family’s ‘let’s celebrate!’ sparkling wine, and with good reason. It’s one of the crispest, most delicious wines I’ve sipped and you can’t help but feel great when you pour and sip a glass.

The wine is superb. But the story behind the winery is incredible, and is best told by Robin and Emily.

Keep calling your reps - especially your senators - to advance the bipartisan common sense gun safety reform bill. Every single day.

Because I guarantee you the pro-guns-no-matter-what supporters are, and it can sway the support of the Republicans who are going against the loudest faction of their party (which has a disproportionate amount of sway) to get something done.

One of those Republicans is John Cornyn. I respect Texas’ senior senator, whom I disagree with him on a lot of policy positions. My respect for him is very much rooted in his willingness to work across the aisle and get things done, and I will take steps in the right direction over hyper-polarization.

I encourage you to check your politics for a second and read this detailed profile on Senator Cornyn and the fight for common sense gun reform - which seems like it should be a no-brainer, but the legislative process would tell you otherwise.

I hope you’re already following my friend Carmen for her incredible recommendations, her great sense of humor, and because she’s just awesome.

I applaud her for speaking up about the fact that she will be moving away from anti-racism content - a topic she’s asked frequently about - but I would be remiss if I didn’t share her excellent piece that Elizabeth published.

Carmen’s 5 tips on online activism are excellent, but this is the one I hope everyone heeds:

“Don’t expect the people you’re learning from to act like your personal Google search. As you learn and grow you might have a lot of questions. Do not put the burden of teaching you every little thing about being anti-racist on your educator.”

“It is said the best medicine for what ails democracy is more democracy. But what does more democracy mean? If it just means more of the kind of politics we have now then it hardly offers a remedy.”

I can’t remember a midterm election that I’ve been more nervous about. I have this sense of dread that it could be the last fair and free election we have in this country - unless we fight AND we reform.

Our primaries are one such problem, and ranked choice voting (check out Emily’s RCV highlight to learn more) is a solution that’s been garnering more and more support, and what this article outlines in great detail.

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