Your Vote Is a Tool To Help Others. Use It Wisely.

George Takei explains why, despite the fact that it was a Democrat who ordered the internment of Japanese Americans when he was a child, that he continues to be a committed progressive Democrat.

George Takei testifies before the Commission for Wartime Relocation Hearings on August 4, 1981. Photo provided by Brad and George Takei.

George Takei has seen a lot. As a child, his family was rousted from their home at gunpoint and ordered to live in a horse stable for weeks, and then sent to two internment camps in the fetid swamps of Rowher, Arkansas and the cold, barren waste of Tule Lake, California.

He didn’t lose hope in America. He didn’t even lose hope in the Democratic Party or its leaders. Here is an essay he wrote for social media about that experience and his subsequent disappointments and setbacks through the years which, while devastating, did not lead him to falter in his belief that progressivism and democracy were things too important to toss aside in anger or spite.

— Jay Kuo, Team Takei

A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had done many great things for American workers, and we believed in him. 

But his Executive Order 9066 was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights. Within my community, over 120,000 of us were sent to the camps, simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor.

It would have been understandable if, in light of our internment, people like me said they’d never vote for Roosevelt, or for any Democrat ever again, given what had been done to us. It would have been understandable if we gave up on America because it had betrayed us, and betrayed its values.

But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has failed so utterly.

I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again. 

My faith would be tested again in the 1990s when Bill Clinton broke my heart. After claiming he was a friend to the gay community, he signed DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, into law. It was a slap in the face to us. And I knew that we still had much work to do. 

But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it. It was not to check out, or to refuse to vote out of anger or protest.

Today, many young people are disappointed and even angry at Joe Biden and the Democrats. A brutal war rages in Gaza, and there are millions of innocent lives at continued dire risk. I have spoken out against the idea of collective punishment, having been through my own harrowing childhood as a victim of it. And I know that many feel that the policy decisions of the White House are unforgivable.

But there is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make one-hundred percent of the time. Some, like FDR was to my family, are at their low points the very opposite of your hopes for a leader. Their decisions can ruin lives and bring disaster, even if they think they are making the right decision for the greater good.

I want everyone to remember this: Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too. A protest vote for a third-party candidate, or a refusal to vote at all, could bring about even greater suffering for the very people you wish to help.

I have stayed with the Democratic Party and the Democratic candidate after internment, after DOMA, and yes, through today’s turmoil because I know that, while it is far from perfect, I want to see it do better. I want to see it thrive and fulfill its best potential. And I don’t want to see our democracy die.

That is what is at stake in the next election. Protest, yes. Demand change, yes. But don’t help out the authoritarians and fascists, who are hoping your anger will turn to cynicism and your passion to indifference. It is all on the line in 2024, especially for those people most in need of our help and compassion.