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A clear reason to vote

7/22/2016, 2:15 p.m.

If ever we need a good reason or motivation to vote, it’s here. Look no further than the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Already by Day 3 of the event that ends Thursday with the official coronation of Donald J. Trump as the GOP presidential nominee, we’ve heard speaker after speaker paint a picture of America and the world that is so frighteningly different from ours.

What is more troubling — and the best motivation for voting yet — are the solutions they offer to the problems: Build a wall, build up the police, build up the military and kill, lock up, deport and destroy the enemy.

And who is the enemy?

Well, from the convention rhetoric, it sounds like us and people of color who look like us.

They have blamed President Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement for violence against police officers.

They cheered when Sheriff David Clarke of Wisconsin announced that the senior officer in Baltimore was acquitted in the nearly spine-severing death of bicyclist Freddie Gray.

They said they believe there are no inequities in the criminal justice system and that America is a land of liberty and justice for all.

We know all too well from experience and news reports around the country that, too often, there is no equal justice.

Ohio, like Virginia, is an “open carry” state, meaning the law allows you to openly carry a firearm.

Well, even the white, card-carrying NRA gun nuts who had planned to bring their weapons outside the Quicken Loans Arena in a misguided show of their 2nd Amendment right to bear arms thought twice after Sunday’s killing of three police officers in Baton Rouge, La., by a mentally ill former Marine sergeant.

If they realized the police are on edge and can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys with all the weapons, imagine what would have happened had a bunch of brothers shown up outside the GOP convention openly carrying guns in a show of their Constitutional right? It would have been “Tragedy on the Cuyahoga River.”

The venom being spewed at this convention should motivate all people of conscience to vote — old, young, black, white, immigrant, descendents of immigrants and enslaved, Native Americans, Latinos, Asians and those with Middle Eastern and African roots.

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa told the convention-goers that ISIS is present in all 50 states. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the crowd that ISIS has vowed to embed operatives among Syrian refugees. Be afraid. Be very afraid was their underlying message.

While we eschew the recent spate of violence against people of color and police in the United States, as well as that committed by terrorists here and abroad, we’ve heard no GOP solutions that address the longtime inequities and disparities in education, jobs, housing, health and other resources that can lead to lasting change and peaceful communities.

Nothing has changed for the GOP. They are a xenophobic, narrow-minded and stingy bunch that want to make America great again by burrowing in a hole, hoarding all the resources and eliminating anyone who makes them face the nation’s diversity and global changes.

We can’t say it enough — Vote on Nov. 8.