It’s fair to say many people don’t look forward to engaging with politics, especially with others. It feels like coming home to a mess that gets worse every time you leave for work. And in that vein, talking about politics feels like arguing over whether you should start with the dishes or bulldoze the entire property and flip it.

But I don’t think many people realize that having that discussion is a freedom that not everyone has and that choosing to disengage from politics is far from an apolitical act.

The common perception of engaging with politics is that you follow the news leading up to an election, read some articles, watch the debates, talk briefly with some friends and then eventually vote, staying up entirely too late for a Tuesday to watch the results.

While this is far from what the expectation should be for engaging with politics, it is also much more than what many people in the U.S. can access. A KFF survey of immigrants from last year provides a snapshot of what the American immigrant experience is like.

While the immigration process in the States takes about two years, during which immigrants cannot vote, the issues presented during this period wouldn’t disappear after an oath of allegiance ceremony.

Nearly half of all surveyed immigrants could not speak English proficiently. Obviously, this presents massive barriers to engaging with the news and learning about the American governmental system.

Furthermore, the study found that one-third of immigrants from the sample struggled to afford basic necessities. If people have to work multiple jobs or long shifts just to live, they certainly don’t have the time or energy to sit down and read the news.

These same issues are not exclusive to immigrants, though it is their voices that are explicitly excluded. Of course there are Americans and DACA recipients who live in poverty or who don’t speak English and can’t engage in politics despite being directly affected by governmental policies.

While voting may be a right, the ability to engage with the entire process is limited to those who have the skills and resources to keep up with politics. And in a year where more than half the world will be voting in some election, making the effort to be politically engaged is more important now than ever. We must speak and act for those who don’t have the opportunity to do so themselves.

It may seem especially draining or upsetting at times, engaging in a more and more daunting and polarizing political atmosphere, but turning away means passively accepting what comes.

Between increasing voter restrictions and concerns over redrawing district lines, it is a privilege to be able to look away, not just from what’s happening in your home or country but the world as well. Having the choice to willingly disengage from politics and news means, if nothing else, you can be content with ignoring the problems faced by others.

This is another part of why talking about politics becomes less accessible. I’ve noticed time and time again that in conversations about politics, it often becomes more of a debate over values. While our politics often are representative of our values, when we start associating them with individual politicians or groups, they become less our own.

When you don’t actively engage with your own viewpoints, either by challenging your own views or reconsidering the traditional approach to a given issue, it becomes easier to lose sight of them. Further, the practice of politics becomes less of a community practice. Politicians are elected to function as community leaders, not individual thought leaders. Engaging in politics is recognizing that you are voting just as much for yourself as you are for your community.

Talking about politics is about listening and perspective-building. It’s about understanding the world is far more complex than we might initially realize and that politics, conceptually, is far from a level playing field.

When we talk about a law, we aren’t just talking about one governmental rule. We are talking about the interpretation of legal language in a hundreds-year-old system within a complex culture. We are expressing to each other that we have had the opportunity to sit down and spend time understanding the legal happenings. It is far from being just our opinions; it is also our circumstances. And not everyone’s circumstances have allowed them the time and resources to be engaged.