The systemic issues in America have a wide web of roots but grow from the same trunk. A major player feeding the issues is the disparity of wealth between classes, races and genders. Essentially, wealth inequality affects everyone.

It is a business’ job to make a bottom line. It is a political system’s job to represent their constituents and develop policy. So, if a political system is knotted with business, money trumps the moral obligations of a society. At what point is a dollar worth more than someone’s livelihood or future?

The way to make a change starts with being socially responsible. By flexing your democratic muscles, you’re exercising your given right as an American.

But you can’t just do that.

In order to fix anything in this nation, we have to acknowledge where we are and everyone has to be informed. Right now people are suffering, struggling and barely surviving in this beautiful nation because of the inequality of wealth.

“America is so much stronger when we see ourselves as a quilt. When I take the best of you and you take the best of me and we put it together, we are so much stronger,” Renee Hughes, chief executive of the eastern Pennsylvania region of the American Red Cross, said. “I don’t have to be like you, you don’t have to be like me, but we do need to all share values.”

Everything in society today comes down to money. For a family of four, being in poverty means that the total income does not exceed $23,850, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 2014, there were a total of 46.7 million people in poverty in the United States alone, meaning that people were not making enough to survive.

But that could change.

It is a very important time in the United States. A time when new leadership will be coming in, which means the importance of voting is higher now than ever before. If every citizen takes a stand by voting, lobbying, calling their congressmen and women, there is a high chance that the systemic flaws you want to see reformed, will be discussed by your government.

“I think the concept of the common good, is one that might be developed in a way to contextualize so much of what we need to do,” Mark Rosenman, a nonprofit sector scholar and activist, said.

Do you want to be a part of a nation that sits idle or turns a blind eye when the perpetual cycle of devastation is happening in your own backyard?

We hope not.

WRITTEN BY MACKENZIE HARRIS