I’ve been doing the most remarkable thing lately … writing letters to people on the other side of the country and telling them my heartfelt thoughts about just why I vote faithfully every time there’s an election.
The folks I’m writing live in South Carolina and some of them have lyrical unique names like Destiny, Damonic, Artrella, Hakeem, Ladasha, and Harmonie — names that might show up in poems of another time or songs of love.
I look at those names and visualize men and women living in a land still colored by our dark civil war history, all of whom have very different lives than myself.
I love that I am in San Francisco reaching out to hundreds of unseen men and women in South Carolina, the city where my beloved grandmother was born and raised. I’ve always loved reaching across borders to connect with humans no matter how different we are, and here I am creating a bridge of sorts in this terribly fractured time.
As I wrote my many letters at my dining room table I came up with a number of personal reasons I believe in voting. They’re actually pretty simple (and then probably not always). These are mostly from the heart, with a nod to my solid high school education.
It is a way to bring change It is our individual and collective voice
It’s a privilege people fought and died for so that women and Black people could vote
Voting equals democracy, our unique form of government by, of, and for the people
Voting brings our people together in their shared values
Since we have been immersed in the pandemic for the past many months I’ve thought a lot about the world outside my little house, my city, and my state. The more the isolation continues, the more I consider many of those outside my sphere who are struggling as I am to adjust to a world where uncertainty and anxiety rule.
Yes, I’m sad and isolated, and at the same time I feel love and compassion for the all the different humans out there suffering in the world.
I experience examples each day reminding me of our collective humanity:
the old woman with her scruffy little dog on a neighborhood street chirping “good morning!” to me
the young people leaning into each other over a local restaurant dinner table with warm smiles on their faces as pretty lights twinkle over their heads
the extra kindness of a medical technician to an anxious patient having a procedure done
the smiles in the eyes of all the delivery guys bringing you our takeout food or the UPS fellows delivering all those packages with good will
the warm musical conversations of the construction workers working so hard on our streets
or a rumpled young man in the park who randomly shouts out to you, “hey, what a great mask you have!”
Many of us are trying in our own way to reach out and connect with our fellow citizens because we feel the unnaturalness of this quarantining. We must witness and be witnessed, since our inclination is really to offer some good to the world. This bring me back to voting.
I first got the vote the year Lyndon Johnson was running, our beloved John Kennedy’s vice president, and I remember the excitement in my heart and mind as I read everything I could get my hands on and pushed my friends to discuss and debate. Johnson was controversial in many ways, but he had been anointed, so to speak, by a remarkable and tragically short-lived president.
On my very first vote as an adult, I did select a winning candidate. (which would not often be the case going forward!), and from that time I stayed excited about this grand process of the population at large selecting their leader, holding on to our beliefs and dreams for change in our complicated world. So many wishes: economic justice, peace not war, schools, civil rights, housing, women’s rights, and so on…
While our basic survival needs as human beings are relatively small (food, shelter, safety), our aspirations for an equitable, humane way of life are vast.
We want a better society with more kindness, less poverty, equal opportunity, and of course justice for all… We have a chance every two years in midterms and every four in presidential elections to make choices we feel will bring us closer to fulfilling some of these goals, and it’s called voting.
And it only really works if everyone takes part. It is important to make our voices heard, and never more so than this year — 2020. There is less than a month to go. It’s time to set aside our quarrels with the ineptness of politicians and the government and the chaos created by bad messaging and cast our ballots to help bring about life altering change for all in this country.
We need to show up and speak out.
All of us in our magnificent diversity need to come together with hope and dedication and use this powerful tool called the vote.
The time is now – because the future is uncertain.
Warmly,
Mag
