V127: The Thought Leaders Issue With King Princess

The musician on being able to vote this year, living under a dictatorship, and the protection of people most at risk.

V127’s Thought Leaders Issue is available for pre-order now.

“Voting is truly the ultimate civic duty that we are given as people. The first election [where] Trump was elected, I couldn’t vote and it was fucking heartbreaking. It made me feel shameful that I couldn’t vote, but I voted [recently] in state elections. I was so fucking proud to put in that ballot because it meant that I was voting not just for myself, but for the country.

“The problem right now [is that] I’m seeing so much negativity around our options [with] who to vote for. I’m seeing a lot of people on the Internet go— ‘Okay, Trump is evil, but Joe Biden’s evil too, so we’re going to lose either way.’ To that I say, ‘if you’re starving and your options for food is something you don’t like or poison—you’re gonna pick the thing that you don’t like, and you’re going to eat it to sustain your life instead of eating poison.’ That’s what this election is about; the lesser of two evils. It’s about taking something that is a shitty situation overall and using your voice to reclaim a semblance of power and equality in this country. We are at an imperative point where we can either choose not to vote because everybody sucks, or you can literally [choose to] do the right thing and vote for the betterment of this country. Because, quite literally, it can get worse.

“We are living under a dictatorship and basically everyone who isn’t a white male is at risk. Women’s reproductive rights are at risk. The protection of Black and brown individuals is at risk. The protection of trans and queer people is at risk. The protection of immigrants is at risk. Everyone is at risk unless you are a white man. We’ve never experienced so many different forms of heinous oppression in this country. We’re under attack, and there’s no better time [than now] to be unified.

“White supremacists have always been in this country and we have a president who’s like,—‘yeah, come out of hiding and be proud [of] your supremacy.’ It’s unbearable and people are dying. Dying from all different sorts of pandemics right now. Pandemics of racial violence, [and] an actual medical pandemic. You have to vote, our future depends on it.”

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