We could move if we wanted to. We aren’t, at least right now, because we’d leave behind our entire social network. Even if we moved where we know people, they wouldn’t help as much with our two young children. I know and understand and accept that. They don’t have to help with our kids, but we’d lose the people who can. We’d lose our kids friends and the network we are building in the neighborhood, which of course can be rebuilt, but that’s also a consideration. I’d probably only see my sister once a year if that because she can’t leave the state due to a custody agreement. Funds would also be an issue.

I also worry about too many democratic people leaving and making the state more red as a result and leaving behind those who can’t move, like my sister and her kids, who will suffer as a result of increasingly authoritarian laws. Some regressive politicians have outright said that it’s their goal to make it miserable for democratic and liberal people to force them to move, make the state redder, and thereby gain even more power.