Vote!
Image courtesy of Quartz Africa
“If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”
― Toni Morrison
This quote, along with Marian Wright Edelman’s, “Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time,” is the foundation from which I have lived my life. They were not my intentional motivations, but what I learned from my family as I grew up. I was not taught to succeed in a silo, but to live and breathe in community.
The Civil Rights Movement, the struggle for Indigenous self-determination, respect and honor, and the influence of the women’s movement, all informed my sense of self, my internal focus and locus. My spiritual Self, the oneness with spirit and God’s omnipotence, was a centrifugal force that fueled and healed me.
It is time to make changes in our country. It is time to vote. I want to believe my vote will be counted along with the millions of other votes that will be cast this year. The only antidote to the dishonesty and unfair practices that infect our nation, is to take responsibility for my part in the process and vote! Everyone’s vote, everyone’s voice, is important.
I remember the lines of South Africans waiting to cast their vote for the newly freed political prisoner, future Nobel Peace Prize awardee, Nelson Mandela, in the country’s first multiracial election. The upcoming elections in America are as important as the vote to overturn apartheid.
Congressman John Lewis, spoke from the Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama on March 1st, 2020, the 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. He said: “Keep your eyes on the prize. Vote like you’ve never voted before…Some gave their very lives…go out there. Speak up! Speak out! Get in the way. Get in good trouble and help redeem the soul of America…”
Join me and all who have served, marched, fought and even died for the opportunity to vote. It is our privilege and right so that each citizen will have access to equality and to live educated, free lives. Our voices have great worth. The universe is listening.
Image courtesy of ACLU of Florida
