Removing Democrat From My On-Screen Graphic

I had the production team at Indiana Week In Review take “Democrat” out of my lower third—that strip of text under your name when you’re on screen. It wasn’t a casual decision, it was a breaking point. Being assaulted by law enforcement on the orders of people I once called political allies was the line for me. You don’t come back from that unchanged.

I tell the kids in my life, over and over, that if people bully you, they aren’t your people. It’s one of those lessons that sounds simple but can take decades to learn. And now I’m the one living it out in public: hoping this separation is temporary, but knowing that when party leaders choose to protect abusers, it isn’t inertia—it’s a choice. A choice to forsake the rest of us because they don’t believe they can do the work without the compromised, no matter how much talent or integrity they push out in the process.

I tell my kids something else too: actions have consequences. Sometimes they’re electoral, but not always. Sometimes they’re about trust, or about whether people still want to show up and do the work. Maybe we’d win more elections if we stopped pushing out the very workers who are willing to fight for justice but unwilling to surrender their boundaries. Boundaries aren’t betrayal. They’re survival.

I’ll keep using every platform I have to stand up for working families, for the marginalized, for democratic values, for survivors of every party and no party at all. But I won’t do it at the cost of my own dignity. Affiliation is not identity, and if those at the top can’t treat their own people with respect, then the lower third can run without that label for now.

Because belonging should never come at the price of complicity.