Why I vote* would be easy enough to answer, as I could just be
honest and say, “Because my mother told me I had to.” But as I have learned
more, read more, and watched more, I have a deeper understanding of all that
was sacrificed so that women and people of color could have this right, which
should have been inherent to us when establishing this country. I don’t see my
vote as some sort of patriotic duty but more as a way to honor those who
sacrificed so much for me to be able to do so.
But yes, my mom told me I had to vote, even when I told her that I didn’t like any of the candidates and that I might just write-in Kermit the Frog – she didn’t care.
Recently, I asked her why she felt so strongly about voting (it is amazing what you can learn from your mom when you ask). “Our family has a long history with voting,” she said.
Just a reminder: my mom’s family was in Texas before Texas was a state.
She shared that when she was 10 years old, my great-grandfather told her that even though they had to pay a poll tax in order to vote, he and my great-grandmother felt it was better to pay than not vote – though it was very difficult for them to do so at the time. She added that my great-great-grandmother was active in LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens). They also felt voting could help prevent discrimination.
My mom was also the first Latina on the Board of the League of Women Voters, and she said that it was in the League that she began to realize that the only way to better our lives was to encourage people, especially in disadvantaged areas, to vote for people who look out for our communities.
So that is partially why I vote – because of my mom.
But thanks to documentaries, movies, books, and other people, I have learned a lot about those who sacrificed their lives and freedom for the vote. Unfortunately, growing up in Texas means I had to learn through their pro-white high school textbooks, and I don’t remember much about this except for maybe a paragraph about the 19th Amendment or Civil Rights.
I don’t mean to give everyone a history lesson, but did you know it has not even been 100 years since women have had the right to vote? And what motivated many women to fight for this right was not simply the injustice of it all, but the deeper issues that men didn’t understand or care about. Only women understood their horrific working conditions as well as the conditions in which their children were living, and they could see that the men weren’t exactly voting with the working poor on their minds. Women also didn’t want their daughters to be without any rights or be seen as mere property.
When I look back at the strategies used by the women’s suffrage movement, it is exciting to see how strategic they were and how many of these tactics are still used today. They not only used protests, marches, and consistent campaigning, but many of these brave women, from England to the US, used more “radical” tactics, including throwing rocks through windows. Many women spent time in jail and when they refused to eat (they were political prisoners but were not treated as such) and were force-fed. (Quick shout out to Lucy Burns and Alice Paul.).
Carol J. Adams has a wealth of knowledge on these histories!
Now, I know that there were some concerns about “distractions” when it came to the suffragette movement and the right for Blacks to vote, but some understood the connections of these issues and supported both - like Frederick Douglass! Again, many issues of oppression are connected and we have to work together to fight them all.
In the US, many people of color are still facing barriers to the right to vote – from states now requiring IDs to straight up intimidation.
If voting was pointless, why would white people be working to scare people of color away from doing it?
This blog is getting long, but let’s take just a quick look at the Freedom Summer organized in the 1960s (by SNCC, SCLC, CORE & NAACP) to register Black voters in Mississippi. Black activists had to fight, and I do not mean that figuratively. Some lost their lives – just to help the Black community register to vote. More than a thousand people were arrested, there were beatings, Black homes and churches were burned, and even some people were killed.
For the right to vote.
I don’t want to pretend that Blacks now have an easy time voting, but this only happened 50 years ago in 1965.
Although I think I had a paragraph in my textbook about the Civil Rights movement, there was pretty much nothing about Chicano history and voting rights. As many people of color know, our histories are not often covered in schoolbooks. In fact, it is difficult to find much about Chicano history anywhere.
Clearly not being able to speak English was a voting barrier for many. (Again, we are talking about land that was Mexico.)
I am often amazed how many white liberals speak out against voting – a right they have had for a long time, while many in our communities have only enjoyed this right a short time.
Not to mention that many positions require the person running to already have money. Many elected officials do not earn much money; therefore, individuals have to have a very flexible job and/or already have money. (When I was in college in Texas, many legislators were doctors or lawyers because the legislature is not in session all year or even every year – it takes someone with money to be able to take three months off during the session.)
Although we know there are many problems with the system, I encourage people to vote because there is likely more than one issue (especially those of us who live in states with ballot initiatives) or even one person you can vote for.
Please don’t misinterpret what I am saying here – I am not saying voting is what creates change in this country but for me, I want to vote in honor of those who wanted me to be able to. (see quote at the end of the blog).
For all of those who sacrificed for this right, and to those who have tried to prevent us from doing so – I vote.
(Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!)
After reading this blog our board member Rick Kelley thought I should add this quote from Howard Zinn:
"I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.
But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."
- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2008/04/6081/election-madness#sthash.k0yP6VhY.dpuf
*As a 501 (C)3 Food Empowerment Project cannot endorse any candidates.
But yes, my mom told me I had to vote, even when I told her that I didn’t like any of the candidates and that I might just write-in Kermit the Frog – she didn’t care.
Recently, I asked her why she felt so strongly about voting (it is amazing what you can learn from your mom when you ask). “Our family has a long history with voting,” she said.
Just a reminder: my mom’s family was in Texas before Texas was a state.
She shared that when she was 10 years old, my great-grandfather told her that even though they had to pay a poll tax in order to vote, he and my great-grandmother felt it was better to pay than not vote – though it was very difficult for them to do so at the time. She added that my great-great-grandmother was active in LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens). They also felt voting could help prevent discrimination.
My mom was also the first Latina on the Board of the League of Women Voters, and she said that it was in the League that she began to realize that the only way to better our lives was to encourage people, especially in disadvantaged areas, to vote for people who look out for our communities.
So that is partially why I vote – because of my mom.
But thanks to documentaries, movies, books, and other people, I have learned a lot about those who sacrificed their lives and freedom for the vote. Unfortunately, growing up in Texas means I had to learn through their pro-white high school textbooks, and I don’t remember much about this except for maybe a paragraph about the 19th Amendment or Civil Rights.
I don’t mean to give everyone a history lesson, but did you know it has not even been 100 years since women have had the right to vote? And what motivated many women to fight for this right was not simply the injustice of it all, but the deeper issues that men didn’t understand or care about. Only women understood their horrific working conditions as well as the conditions in which their children were living, and they could see that the men weren’t exactly voting with the working poor on their minds. Women also didn’t want their daughters to be without any rights or be seen as mere property.
When I look back at the strategies used by the women’s suffrage movement, it is exciting to see how strategic they were and how many of these tactics are still used today. They not only used protests, marches, and consistent campaigning, but many of these brave women, from England to the US, used more “radical” tactics, including throwing rocks through windows. Many women spent time in jail and when they refused to eat (they were political prisoners but were not treated as such) and were force-fed. (Quick shout out to Lucy Burns and Alice Paul.).
Carol J. Adams has a wealth of knowledge on these histories!
Now, I know that there were some concerns about “distractions” when it came to the suffragette movement and the right for Blacks to vote, but some understood the connections of these issues and supported both - like Frederick Douglass! Again, many issues of oppression are connected and we have to work together to fight them all.
In the US, many people of color are still facing barriers to the right to vote – from states now requiring IDs to straight up intimidation.
If voting was pointless, why would white people be working to scare people of color away from doing it?
This blog is getting long, but let’s take just a quick look at the Freedom Summer organized in the 1960s (by SNCC, SCLC, CORE & NAACP) to register Black voters in Mississippi. Black activists had to fight, and I do not mean that figuratively. Some lost their lives – just to help the Black community register to vote. More than a thousand people were arrested, there were beatings, Black homes and churches were burned, and even some people were killed.
For the right to vote.
I don’t want to pretend that Blacks now have an easy time voting, but this only happened 50 years ago in 1965.
Although I think I had a paragraph in my textbook about the Civil Rights movement, there was pretty much nothing about Chicano history and voting rights. As many people of color know, our histories are not often covered in schoolbooks. In fact, it is difficult to find much about Chicano history anywhere.
Clearly not being able to speak English was a voting barrier for many. (Again, we are talking about land that was Mexico.)
I am often amazed how many white liberals speak out against voting – a right they have had for a long time, while many in our communities have only enjoyed this right a short time.
Not to mention that many positions require the person running to already have money. Many elected officials do not earn much money; therefore, individuals have to have a very flexible job and/or already have money. (When I was in college in Texas, many legislators were doctors or lawyers because the legislature is not in session all year or even every year – it takes someone with money to be able to take three months off during the session.)
Although we know there are many problems with the system, I encourage people to vote because there is likely more than one issue (especially those of us who live in states with ballot initiatives) or even one person you can vote for.
Please don’t misinterpret what I am saying here – I am not saying voting is what creates change in this country but for me, I want to vote in honor of those who wanted me to be able to. (see quote at the end of the blog).
For all of those who sacrificed for this right, and to those who have tried to prevent us from doing so – I vote.
(Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!)
After reading this blog our board member Rick Kelley thought I should add this quote from Howard Zinn:
"I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.
But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."
- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2008/04/6081/election-madness#sthash.k0yP6VhY.dpuf
*As a 501 (C)3 Food Empowerment Project cannot endorse any candidates.
I feel that even if people don't like any of the presidential candidates, they should still vote on local officials and ballot measures. Presidential elections tend to overshadow the important decisions that are being made at the local level, that citizens should weigh in on.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agreed!! Think and act local.
ReplyDeleteI think voting locally is even more important in that your one vote counts more. And, if you're able, running for election locally is great too. Micah White (one of the Occupy Wall Street founders) has been talking about this a lot lately (as relates to his new book).
ReplyDeleteState ballot initiatives (which usually coincide with presidential races) are also important to vote in, for those of us lucky enough to live in states that have them. It's our chance at "true" democracy (as opposed to republic or "representative" democracy) - we vote on laws!
Anyway, this is a great post and I love the reasons and history snippets you provide. I think the next logical step (after removing the poll tax some decades ago and doing away with the voter suppression initiatives like driver's license requirements) is to make it a mandatory holiday (or half-day) for everyone so that no one is prevented by work (or school) from voting.
As always...your writing is thought provoking and inspiring. Thanks for this and for the quote from Howard Zinn.
ReplyDelete