I’m about to have a daughter. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t expected. In fact, a year a go to the day I was a middle aged single man with no intentions of having children; but intention doesn’t always make reality.

The reality that always led me to dismiss the notion of having a child is the multifaceted miasma of capitalism and the slow motion suicide of our species it assures. And as I’m crossing the threshold to parenthood — the threshold that supposedly makes one more ‘conservative’, aspirational and embracing of the status quo — I find I am as radical, and practical,  as ever.

Below follows the world I want for my soon to be daughter:

1. The biological fact of having a vagina should in no way impact the recognition of her basic human rights — her right to self-determination, autonomy over her own body and equal protection under the law. That we are still discussing this in the 21st century is one of the greatest travesties of our species.

2. The right to a habitable planet. Generally speaking, human beings can’t exist outside of the confines of the planet upon which we live, so we better put every intellectual and natural resource into assuring that we can continue to live here.

3. Both self-determination and ecological preservation require that we have a socio-economic system which both recognizes equality and prioritizes our continued existence. Neither of these necessities are possible within capitalism. We not only need a ‘political revolution’, we need a full scale recalibration of how we can continue to live on this planet, and live in a way which recognizes the humanity of every human being.

4. A world in which dreams and ideals aren’t dismissed as youthful naivete, but embraced as both imminent and immanence.

Despite my imminent parenthood, I am ‘still of an age’ in which I can see a better world for my daughter. I can still have ideals. I can still bristle at the suggestion that ‘security’ and ‘stability’ are more important than what is right. I can still sneer at the complacent capitalist apologists in the Democratic party and tell them to join their corporate patrons in the 7th circle of hell.

Electing Bernie Sanders might help put us on the footing we need to create this new world I want for my daughter. But it is not enough. We need a global movement. All countries. Everywhere. Equality and Existence. We are species. Species-being. Human. Equal.

We are.

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