"Change takes time!"

As we waited for hours in lines for trains to get back home after Obama's first inauguration in D.C., one city transit worker walked up and down the line proclaiming, "Change takes time!" in a plea with all of us to exhibit patience in the situation.

I've thought about that moment a lot over the years, because that transit worker was mostly correct—positive change, change that tries to replace broken systems with something productive, takes a LOT of time.

Think of it this way: every year Lollapalooza comes to Chicago and for weeks they build the equivalent of a small metropolis in the middle of Graht Park. That construction takes quite a bit of time, every single year.

Do you know how long it takes to dismantle most of that temporary metropolis each year? A couple of hours.

Destruction is easy. Building something new is not.

The U.S. elected a President in 2016 that is very good at implementing change, as long as that change is reversing progress and destroying basic rights. The next person to occupy that office isn't going to be able to fix just that damage in their first four years, much less make much progress on the raft of transformative plans many of the people running for that office right now are promising.

Vote your heart, but don't vote for someone simply promising you a better, new world that will solve all of your problems, because I think we're a long way from that. We need to elect people who are thinking about the generations after us, and slowly start to build a better world for them.

So when you vote, keep that in mind. Ultimately though, you should vote for who you think is best. And if you want to support that person and try to convince other people that your candidate deserves their vote, by all means, please do so! But maybe, just maybe, we could support the candidates we want in a single party without viciously attacking any candidate from that party that we don't support.

Make positive arguments. Be part of the change. Don't be part of the destruction.