Voting today is as important as it was 100 years ago
Listening to speeches at America’s presidential nominating conventions this month in the midst of a global pandemic responsible for the death of more than 177,000 Americans, I am reflecting on the David Foster Wallace quote from “Consider the Lobster”: “In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some diehard’s vote.”
This quote is a frightening reality check at this precise moment in history and adds meaning and context to our celebration of the centennial of women securing the right to vote. The 19th Amendment may have been ratified a century ago, but the movement was born years before, in 1848 at a Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.
For years women organized, went on hunger strikes and protested. The Women’s Suffrage Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878 and re-introduced for years, until it was finally approved by the House and Senate in 1919. It won ratification from the required 36 states on Aug. 24, 1920, and that ratification was certified on Aug. 26 – exactly 100 years ago – on what’s now called Women’s Equality Day.
But it wasn’t until 1924 that Native Americans were considered citizens with voting rights, and it took decades more for them to win the vote in each state. And Black women, particularly in the South, faced additional tests, taxes, and outright violence, all designed to suppress their votes until Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
History is prologue, and the long and arduous struggle for equality, freedom, and justice for all in the United States of America continues. This Aug. 26, in the year 2020, Americans are still petitioning, protesting, marching, braving violence and facing arrest. Again and still, we are fighting for the dream of an equal and free America. This summer, more than any other in my lifetime, I can feel the energy of women and people of color and all ages fighting for equality and demanding a place at the table.
In the 21st century, there is still no such thing as not voting.
In 2020, a century after the 19th Amendment was ratified, the first woman of African American and South Asian descent is vying for the vice presidency of the United States of America. I am deeply moved by this, regardless of politics. The tangible forward movement underscores that our participation in government, protesting, serving and voting, does in fact result in change.
We must celebrate the progress of equality, but never forget the sacrifices of our forebears as modern day threats of voter suppression and interference by our government proliferate. Compared with white voters, Black voters still wait an average of 45% longer to vote, and Latino voters wait 46% longer. Not voting is always a vote for the current government. Not voting says, “I want those in power to stay in power,” if we are honest with ourselves.
For American women, casting a vote is as much about equal power in the workplace, in government, in education, in health care and in the criminal justice system, as it is about politics. Women’s voices in these vital systems will be silenced without enough representation. I am keenly aware that the rights that make my career possible, and my voice heard, were not available to my grandmother, and some not even to my mother. I remember the astonishment I felt when my mother told me she could not have a credit card in her own name until the 1970s. The choices and aspirations of the women I love today would have been daydreams just a generation or two ago.
We all must do our part and take the time to look up the voting requirements where we live, confirm our registration, and have the documents we need to vote. I challenge you, and I am challenging myself, to go even further. Let’s make a COVID-19-SAFE plan with friends and family to go to the polls together. Let’s offer rides to people in our communities who need them. Let’s take our kids with us when we vote. Let’s tell them the stories of suffragists like the abolitionist Grimké sisters and trailblazing journalist Ida B. Wells and teach them that nothing can be taken for granted.
When I vote this November, I will think about what my vote means. I will think of the women who went on hunger strikes so that I can have a choice. I will remember the activists, the organizers, the protesters who fought and continue to fight for equal rights and equal protection under the law. I will cast my vote for my children, for my family, for my community and for all the communities in America today who are in pain, overlooked, overworked, and underpaid.
Democracy is a system that requires active participation. Our great country did not begin with the reality of equality for most of its people, but it did start with that dream. Let’s seize the opportunity to be heard, protect our constitutional rights and move forward until we can say that all Americans are afforded equal rights and access to justice under the law.
There is no such thing as not voting.