1 Some people hear “social worker” and automatically think you’re a child protective services worker who take kids away. They don’t always know that the 200,000 of us in the United States trained as clinicians equal more than the number of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric nurses combined. More than 40 percent of American Red Cross volunteers are social workers. Sinema is joined by hundreds of fellow social workers in national, state, and local elected offices, including US senator Debbie Stabenow and US representatives Barbara Lee, Carol Shea-Porter, Luis Gutierrez, Niki Tsongas, and Susan Davis.

2 Inflamators are not people who peacefully protest, resist, or work to advocate for change. These are the people who are lambasted all over the news, demonstrating extreme behaviors—even violence to make their points known. Gasoline dousers never carry any water—they live to stoke the flames as high as they can go. Unfortunately, they can make the rest of the group they allegedly stand for look just as extreme and irrational. This is why we need rational thinkers to speak up, Sinema-style, to seek shared values, not promote inflammatory behavior.

3 A word of caution: you don’t necessarily have to be a full-fledged inflamator to fall into this trap from time to time. We can be passionate about principles, but need to remember that we can turn people off instead of being able to effectively convey ideas that contribute toward positive progress. It doesn’t mean we give up what we hold true. It means we are able to be nimble enough to negotiate shared desirable outcomes.