As many of us know running for any form of government as a pagan is not an easy task considering numbers for pagan officials are hard to find. In the age of spiritual awakening and paganism becoming a fast-growing religion here in the united states. Where social media helps spread information from education to personal practices. Along with the uprising in pagan paths being more shown within our media. We have seen many instances where pagans have held a prayer in city meetings. Most recently there has been a big step forward in the representation of pagans running for office. Brittany Jones from Eugene, Oregon. Their campaign towards running for the presidency in 2024 in the Democratic Party. Mrs. Jones is a proud veteran and member of the LBGTQ+ community and also identifies spiritually as pagan. After finding Mrs. Jones via her TikTok video talking about her campaign. It instantly sparked my interest to see if my eyes were deceiving me and if this was some kinda joke. But the more I deep dived I found out that it was in fact a reality and even though Mrs. Jones will only be 34 at the time of her campaign in the year 2024, By August of that year, she will have met the age requirement for the presidency.
Many of you may be wondering what are the views of this new potential candidate. The information we gathered from the candidate's website includes the following.
Human Rights - The right of choice should be federally protected. This matter should not be up to the states as to what a person does with their medical decisions, religious preferences, or sexual orientation. These challenge to our current laws and ordinances that have come up have been especially damaging to the ones we should be protecting, our youth and minorities. The separation of Church and States is as old as our fair nation, and various faith groups are encroaching and interfering more and more in the field of politics, vying for political power. This needs to be stopped and the separation enforced for the protection for the freedoms we have fought long and hard to obtain.
Immigration - Allocating money towards border control has proven to be a failure. We are trying to treat the symptom of a larger problem without treating the causes. We should be focusing on immigration reform, such as how immigrants can gain asylum and visas. We should also be focusing on the numbers of illegal American immigrants that are in other nations such as Mexico, South America, Canadian provinces, European nations, and many others. Jones wants to be transparent in her campaign and not be a symbol of hypocrisy.
Regulations for our politicians - Jones would like to propose term and age limits to those serving in our Government and office, as well and legislation to prevent politicians from voting for their own pay raises. Our taxes pay the politicians, and it is their duty to serve us, the people. It should be the decision of the people to increase or decrease the pay of the politicians that serve us. The taxpayer dollars that this will save can be used to fight our homeless epidemic, our failing educations system, and our flagging healthcare system.
The epidemic of Homelessness - Jones has previously been a homeless single mother. She'll tell you outright the challenges and difficulties and lack of resources that she faced. There are not enough programs, funding, or housing to help deal with the issue. And just like with our immigration difficulties, homelessness is a symptom of the failure of the system that is meant to help and protect the people. Instead, the system has been corrupted in such a manner that it fails to protect the most vulnerable amongst us such as; single parents, veterans, at risk youth, minorities, those with disabilities, and many more. The housing crisis and cost of living has far outplaced the rate of inflation. Jones will address these issues and work on getting the homeless places to live instead of dismissing the issues or shuffling them from place to place, ultimately saving taxpayer dollars.
Many of the issues listed on the website are things we know will be of heated debate during the 2024 election period. But I know they do not answer all the questions that we have when it comes to next year's election. Which will bring many questions to them as it will for future candidates who are also running. One of the mission goals that stuck out to me is the homeless crisis. As a pagan in Middletown, Ohio who has seen the effect it has not only on my hometown but many across America. It makes us beg to wonder what can we do to build to create a solution to this crisis. Even Before the pandemic hit we have always had issues with home stability for many Americans. After covid, we saw numbers jump up and with the cost of inflation this year it's affected many more Americans. All across the united states, there are programs and shelters that help aid in the relief. Yet we still find the problem to be overwhelming where the help either doesn't come fast enough. The shelters become so overran that they can not take more people in. Plus there are also the mental health and addiction aspects that play a part in the homeless crisis. As to what the solution may be to help start the process of ending homelessness, I do not know. But what I do know is we need a better solution in place than the one we currently have.
We also reached out to Mrs. Jones's campaign press manager and hope to be able to do a podcast with them soon on their presidency campaign. This way we can ask questions and gain more insight into this potential candidate alone with the policies and changes they want to bring forth. If you would like to see this happen reach out to Mrs. Jones's media manager and let them know. The more response they get the more we will be likely to help get information to the pagan communities and learn more.
The Devine Witch
Debbie Lewis
Please note that I own none of the media presented in this article and it was from the social media of Mrs. Jones.
Links to Mrs. Jones's Campaign
Tiktok- Brittany Jones (@jonesforpresident2024) TikTok | Watch Brittany Jones's Newest TikTok Videos
Reference Links
When it came to reference links for pagan representatives in government offices now and ever. I had trouble finding satistics that were update and reliable.
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