As President of the United States, I would foremost like to promote the idea of education and equality of all American people in the hopes that this would serve as a key stepping stone towards attaining peace as a country united. America was founded on a declaration signed 230 years ago, in part asserting the idea that all people are equal. While there are several amendments I would personally make to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to make them more applicable to the America we live in today, I believe that as a country we must stand by our original declaration that every individual has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
People from all nations, with all different backgrounds and skin colors, move to the United States for a second chance—to escape war, poverty, and injustice. The President has a responsibility to these American people to act as a leader and initiate positive change. Still, poverty, the wage gap, gender inequality, sexual harassment, racial inequality, and religious stigmas continue to be prevalent issues Americans face daily, making it difficult simply to survive. There are people in Flint, Michigan who have been living without clean running water for over three years. Other groups like the Meskwaki and Sioux tribes have had their voices drowned out in favor of a 1,700 mile oil pipeline running through their land, standing as only one example of a significant group of people who are made to feel less valuable than the wealthy upper class. As president, it would be my goal to make the voices of these underrepresented minorities heard as the first step towards achieving equality.
However, the ideations of people in our country today clash drastically, resulting in arguments over whether certain people deserve basic human rights, rather than starting conversations about how to best solve our issues. To truly achieve the equality every person living in this country deserves, it is vital to implement a more open and effective education system, and to promote the unabbreviated discussion of how our country’s history affects everyone today. As president, I would ensure that a system is put into place to educate people both young and old on the true history of our country and to expose people from every walk of life to opinions that are not solely their own. I would encourage conversation about what it really means to be Muslim, Native American, an immigrant, an American. It is time to stop ignoring the opinions of others and create positive, tangible results.
As President of the United States, I would do all this in the hopes that the racial, gender, and religious equality we achieve would eventually permeate our media. This is especially important so children can see everyone is equal, so a little girl whose mother was born in Mexico or a little boy whose grandparents immigrated from Ghana can know they have just as much right to be president, to make something of themselves, as any settler living in America 200 years ago. True peace will be hard to come by, but when this unity is achieved, when we no longer look at each other with hatred and fear but with understanding and compassion, that peace will be within reach.