Becoming Our Ancestors' Wildest Voting Dreams
We need a conversation that completely drowns out & shuts down the "not voting" crowd
Publisher’s Riff
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There’s been a lot of conversation around the value of the vote and, in particular, “why the vote matters for Black people.” It’s a peculiar and toxic question because it is exactly the wrong kind of question and the last conversation we should be having at an urgent time like this. Yet, it is being promoted by not only Trump/MAGA/Republican-backed (with Russian infodemic support) bots on social media - created to spread disinformation and actively depress Black voters, especially younger Black voters - but, also by people in the community claiming to represent community interests. Even after clear lessons seen and learned in 2016, many potential voters are allowing themselves to get trapped into this mindset again. Interestingly enough, that debate has reached a fevered pitch this week after the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate pick.
That’s not at all surprising and is very intentional. Biden opponents - who are, by all measures, active white nationalists - are finding every way imaginable to suppress or block Black voting. One way is by making many of them doubt and question one of the most fundamental, rite-of-passage activities Black Americans have always engaged in.
It’s sad because, for one thing, it’s not really difficult to do …. absent the systematic voter suppression designed to make many of us stand in line uncomfortably for several or more hours to do it. But, we sometimes do that, anyway, when waiting to buy the next big new product or to have our digital devices serviced or standing in line to get tickets for a blockbuster movie or a major entertainer’s concert - and whereas voting is a free, no-fee exercise, those activities above are things we have to sometimes empty bank accounts for. So, what’s the problem if we’re forced to do it in this instance when democracy and our very lives and the fate of the planet depends on it?
People cannot claim to advocate or engage activism for issues like reparations, or “defunding the police,” or environmental justice or fixing climate change or ending poverty or ending food insecurity or creating a livable wage or ending systemic racism … and then not want to vote or actively discourage their fellow activists, colleagues, friends and family from voting. That’s not smart. That’s not empowering. That’s just self-sabotage, plain and simple. None of the above issues are resolved unless we’re all voting on them.
It’s imperative that all of us resolved to vote actively eliminate the conversation that’s attempting to keep our communities from not voting. That should not even be a conversation entertained, it should be non-negotiable. There is no wiggle room for young potential voters, for example, who are on the fence about this. There is no fence with respect to Black people and the right to vote. That should always be the standard. Hinting otherwise is counter-productive and, ultimately, merely perpetuates and buys in to “white supremacy.”
Hence, not voting is the most white supremacist thing a Black person could ever do. We need to be very forceful and final about that. There is no “oh, I get it, oh I understand why some people are not voting.” No: there is no understanding. It’s either do or die on this. It’s either you’re in the fight or you have punked out of it. Not voting is open disrespect of our ancestors who sacrificed greatly to ensure we had this basic act to do.
Voting should be a standard rite-of-passage exercise for every Black family and household. Voting and civic participation habits should not only be formed by protesting, but by taking our children, at the youngest possible age, to the voting booths with us and even allowing them to participate in the act with you if an election judge allows it and the child is behaved and quiet enough to do it. The first action on the 18th birthday of every young Black individual should be filling out a voter registration form. Parents and grandparents should actively accompany their young people to the polling precincts on local, state and federal election days every time until they are comfortable enough to do it by themselves.
We hear this line every four years: “the election of a lifetime.” Always high stakes. Always been life and death. The choice for president always a desperate de-harmification exercise, especially for Black people. There is never a good choice; merely a choice between “the lesser of two evils” as the famous cynical adage goes.
But, this time, indeed, perhaps for the first time, is that election. It’s really here, y’all. Political High stakes, electoral life-and-death finally arrived. We really do see the proverbial Death Star hanging above our planet in the form of an orange haired narcissist draped in a scourge of resurgent white nationalism that’s plotting nefarious election takeover schemes from Eastern Europe to the state of Georgia. There is no “lesser of two evils” this year. There is an epic battle between good and evil; this is now Darth Vader (Trump) versus Obi Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia (Biden and Harris). We could go on for days about the state of hot mess we find ourselves in, but no need since we’re living it: blatant corruption as open-air as the corner mixed with genocidal pandemic fueled by criminal negligence in the White House and on Capitol Hill, all seasoned with doses of destructive regulatory rollbacks on housing rights, labor rights and environmental protection.
The world is, literally, on dumpster fire.
The fire extinguisher is, simply, everyone that can voting en masse. Maximum turnout. People will need to vote as if their life depended on it - because it, simply, does. And, really, there was never such a thing as any change in a civic democratic society without a vote. Looking to deconstruct systemic racism? Well, the first empowering step in that long-game process is exercising your right to vote.
Now 55 years after the passage of the historic Voting Rights Act, the people with the most at stake should be the last to harbor doubts about its worthiness. It works - especially when it’s followed up with the harder post-election work of tireless advocacy, lobbying, pressure and persistence. The changes you want never crystallize without public policy. Demands made in the protest heat of the moment must materialize from the meticulous crafting of bills, resolutions, ordinances and laws painstakingly negotiated by presidents, Members of Congress, Senators, state legislators, City Councilors, Mayors and others elected, hired, paid and tasked to channel public needs. Policy is thereby shaped by election winners. Election losers will stand on the sidelines and continue to gripe.
The extent of that election win, however, goes as far as the eligible people who did turn out and vote. Did you vote in the last election even when you had a chance? If the answer is no, you then left it to the few who did to make decisions for you. Voting was never the end-all-be-all of any process, but it is a manifestation of power. It is the fist in the fight. It is the first, big step toward fulfilling community obligations and honoring ancestral duties. “Voting is one of the Holiest things we can do. It affirms our equality. Those who suppress it are stifling our power & limit our potential. Voting affirms our humanity," said AME Church Bishop Adam Jefferson Richardson during a broadcast of Reality Check on WURD.
Yes, people did die so we could, at least, do that. It is free, it only costs you time, the occasional long line and slight irritation that you never pick the perfect candidate. And, so let’s become our ancestors wildest electoral dreams. Let’s honor them. Let’s vote.
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