{"id":185422,"date":"2014-11-20T04:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=185422"},"modified":"2014-11-20T04:00:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T18:00:11","slug":"change-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/change-starts\/","title":{"rendered":"Change starts with you!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For a few years, I\u2019ve lived away from home. I\u2019ve kept my voting status and have been quiet all these years.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I ask you to think about the past few years. Think about education, healthcare, your lifestyle, and ask yourself one question, were you content and satisfied? I can honestly say that I wasn\u2019t. I was tired of living paycheck to paycheck helping my parents pay for utilities that amounted to what I took home after deductions. I was tired of working twice as hard to see my wages only go to bills and not enough to provide more for myself. I was tired of the empty and broken promises set forth from our leaders and after election\u2014wasn\u2019t remembered or even validated. I was tired of living in the shadows of our Commonwealth, so I moved.<\/p>\n<p>I take pride in being a Chamorro from the CNMI. I\u2019ve upheld my tradition, customs, and culture. One day I hope to return home and live in our home paradise but not when I can\u2019t rely on improper healthcare, limited resources for education or high cost of living. Yes, our retirees are given back their full pension as well as retro pay for the past year. Yes, our people received utility vouchers. Yes, it is the promise that IT will continue and that IT will work harder but\u2026IT was given sufficient time in the past few years to do so. Why just now?<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s stop living in the shadows of broken promises and lies. Let\u2019s stop holding our breaths for empty promises of making change happen because it only happens when they need something. Let\u2019s give Heinz and Ray a chance to affect the changes our CNMI needs to thrive and progress. Let\u2019s give Heinz and Ray a chance to be the change we need. Ask yourself, can you afford to wait for change or do you want change to happen now? Vote for Heinz and Ray in this runoff\u2014the change starts with you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roslyn Leon Guerrero<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Vancouver, WA<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a few years, I\u2019ve lived away from home. I\u2019ve kept my voting status and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[26,37,67,244],"class_list":["post-185422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-cnmi","tag-education-2","tag-people","tag-utility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}