Voting is the best way to celebrate
Tomorrow will be Election Day here in the same city where, less than a week ago, multitudes turned out to show their passion for the Red Sox, who had just triumphed in the World Series.
As festivals go it doesn’t get more joyous than that.
But tomorrow will be a celebration, too, the ultimate exercising of our democracy, meaning we all have a personal stake in how things turn out, rather than simply having a rooting interest in the outcome.
So will we see similar multitudes descending on polling stations tomorrow, and if not, why?
How can anyone say it doesn't matter, yet that’s exactly what those who’ll sit it out will be saying, in effect voting with their feet.
Is it simply nostalgia that makes political junkies feel this way?
That’s part of it. One of Norman Rockwell’s bestknown Americana paintings shows a little kid peeking out from beneath a voting Joe FITZGERALD curtain while his mother is completing her ballot.
But it’s congressman John Lewis, not some adorable kid, who frequently comes to mind here on Election Day.
Do you remember him? He’s now 78, a Pavlovian liberal from Georgia, and though his politics differ from those harbored here he’s still looked upon with lasting admiration at this address.
The youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, Lewis was viciously beaten as a Freedom Rider, and had his head cracked open on Bloody Sunday in 1965 while attempting to lead marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge en route from Selma to Montgomery.
It was the savagery of that assault that directly led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Try telling Lewis or those who risked their lives with him that voting is no big deal.
Remember Louise Day Hicks, a political lightning rod back in the ’70s when she led the opposition to court-ordered busing?
She was 87 when she died, but clearly nearing the end a year earlier when future City Council president Steve Murphy spotted her outside the L Street Bathhouse on Election Day 2002.
“Her eyesight was obviously bad,” he said, “and she had to be assisted from her car by an aide, yet she dealt with it all just to make sure her voice was heard again. There was such a dignity to her presence there that day.”
And there’ll be a dignity to anyone showing up to vote tomorrow.
Will it be as important as beating the Yankees, Astros and Dodgers?
No. Indeed, it’ll be so much more important that it’s not even close.