Why I went to my polling place

I grew up understandwas a hero, although he ing the sacred nature of never spoke about it, just the franchise. I didn’t as combat veterans rarely need to read about female speak about their days of suffragettes marching for gunfire and anguish. the vote, or civil rights My views on voting workers facing down the are therefore something KKK in the deep south deeper, something more during the 1960s. I had a profound than many peoreal life hero living in my ple who just assume house in Havertown. we have that right, and

Ted Flowers was a scrappy kid maybe we’ll use it, maybe we from West Philadelphia who basiwon’t. Those views have been cally raised himself, having been amplified by the clients I have left in foster homes by parents worked with as an immigrawho weren’t ready to be parents. tion lawyer. About 15 years ago, He was influenced by the good I represented an asylum applipriests at St. Tommy More, alcant from Albania, who had been though not quite enough to keep a poll watcher in his hometown him out of trouble as a teen. His outside of the capital Tirana. A decision to go to law school was rival political group beat him so probably a smart one, since he viciously that he lost all of his might have ended up on the other teeth. He was a 22-year-old man side of the criminal code had he who had to wear dentures befollowed his youthful tendencies. cause they had beaten his teeth Shortly after graduating from out of his head. Imagine the force Temple and before starting his cait takes to do that. And yet, he reer, Daddy joined the Lawyers never regretted being there, and United for Civil Rights and went doing what he needed to do. down to Jackson, Mississippi, to I had another client a few help register voters. years later, whose family was still

Daddy was a white Irish Yanliving in Iraq. She showed me kee, but he saw what was happena cell phone photo of her sister, ing to what were then called Newith that famous blue stamped groes below the Mason-Dixon finger, proof that she had voted line: Intimidation, threats, vioin a free election. She was so lence, death. This was what met proud. the folks who dared exercise their Still another client from Kethen-tenuous right to vote, a right nya had been the campaign that had to be buttressed and remanager for her brother, who affirmed in the Voting Rights Act. ran for office as an opposition Daddy was there to help those candidate to a very brutal infolks register to vote, and then cumbent. She had been raped actually make it to the primabecause of her advocacy, and ries in one piece. His journals, still, she continued to speak out. from which I’ve quoted in previVoting was that important to ous articles, talk abouther.thewall of hostile humanity his clients Not one of these people had to face when they ascended mailed in a vote. Not a one rethe courthouse steps. My father fused to show up in person, putting their bodies on the line, bodies that were beaten and bruised, crushed and coerced, to make that mark of citizenship, that indication that they exist as civic creatures, that powerful statement of “I matter.” Not a one.

You might say that mail-in voting didn’t exist back in the 1960s when Ted Flowers was in Mississippi, and you would likely be right. You might say that what happens in other countries is irrelevant to what is happening in the United States, and I can’t fault you there. You might say, over and over, “Pandemic!” and I would understand your fear of contagion.

But I actually don’t understand why anyone would let the most important choice they make as citizens be left up to the postal service. I keep thinking of the things my father wrote in his journal, about elderly African Americans, some with canes and some in wheelchairs, putting their bodies on the line to vote in the shadow of the KKK. It’s that I remember the photos my Albanian friend showed me, the ones taken of him at the hospital with his mangled and bloody mouth. It’s that I remember the look on the face of my Iraqi client, and her radiant smile at the memory of her sister. And it’s that I remember the defiance in the eyes of my Kenyan friend, who still carried with her the burden of her fight, and her vote.

I want to honor the people who went through the hell I don’t have to, in order to exercise their human right.

Putting a stamp on an envelope is far less than they are owed.