America, You Better Vote!

America, listen up. I don’t care what party you’re in, what religion you worship, nor do I care what the color of your skin is, nor do I care about your gender. If you’re an American, you know that tomorrow is an important day. Tomorrow is a chance for you to vote for who represents you in the House of Representatives and in your State House. For the lot of you, tomorrow also includes a chance to vote for who will be your State Senator, Governor, other Statewide positions or Senator.

These positions, and, who fills them, are important. They decide what kind of taxes you pay and how much. They decide how your hard-earned tax dollars are spent. They decide what priorities our country and our states have. They have more control over our lives that you realize.

I know this from personal experience. In 2017, our Congress decided that the Federal Perkins Loan, which was established in 1957 to help low income students pay for college, was no longer needed. In 60 years’ time, over 30 million people went to college with the help of the Perkins Loan. But at a time when income inequality is at its worst level since before the Great Depression and college tuition is at its highest price, our Congress decided that after 60 years of existence, the Federal Perkins Loan was no longer needed. They let it expire, causing tens of thousands of students like myself to scramble to make up the difference.

I was very lucky though. I wrote my Financial Aid Office and they made up most of the difference. I just had to secure a small private loan to cover the rest. Others, I imagine, were not as lucky as I was, having to scramble even further to ensure they could stay in school.

When people say that voting doesn’t make a difference, call bullshit on it because they’re dead wrong. It does. I know it personally.

Beyond that, you should vote because even though it is a right, that right has and is currently being desecrated as we speak. Right now, there are 53,000 Georgians, most of whom are Black, who are having their right to vote trampled on because of tiny errors in their voter registration forms. Right now, there are Native people in North Dakota whose vote is being suppressed because they don’t have physical addresses on their identification cards, while Reservations lack those physical addresses. Hundreds of thousands of people have been purged from the voter rolls in states like Indiana, Ohio, and Florida since 2016. And after the repeal of much of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Shelby County v. Holder (2013), states across the country have closed DMVs and introduced strict ID laws, making voting incredibly difficult.

To not vote is a privilege that only the privileged can afford. And right now, there are many people in this country who can’t afford that.

Right now, up to 40% of homeless kids that sleep on our nations streets or in homeless shelters are LGBT. Trans people are regularly murdered across the country for being Trans. Black men are arrested and jailed at rate disproportional to how many White people are. There are millions of people who have served their time in prison and still can’t vote, even though they have paid their debt to society. Native Hawaiian people have some of the highest homelessness and poverty rates of any group of people in our country. Veterans aren’t getting the care they need. And Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water.

If kneeling during the national anthem is desecration of our flag, well then, I hope you know that not voting is spitting on our soldier’s graves. Soldiers died during the Revolutionary War in the name of building this country. Our country was literally founded because we wanted a voice in Parliament just as our British colonizers decided to impose new taxes on us (No taxation without representation). Soldiers died during the Civil War to keep our country together, and in the process ending chattel slavery and theoretically extending the right to vote to Black men. Soldiers died the Second World War to extinguish the fire of fascism, while in the process inspiring millions of Americans to live up to the ideas that our founding fathers believed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that we our endowed by our creator certain unalienable rights, chief among these: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our country has failed throughout its history to stand by its ideas, that I truly understand. But not voting is actively sabotaging this sacred idea.

Beyond our soldiers, not voting also means desecrating the graves of those who although didn’t die in war, fought the good fight at home. People like Congressman John Lewis, who had his skull bashed in on the Edmund Pettis Bridge so that Americans of all races and backgrounds could be treated equally and the right to vote be guaranteed to all. People like Harvey Milk, who was one of the first openly gay people to be elected to public office. He was shot in the head standing up for what he believed in. People like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated by a sniper. He declared after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed “We cannot rest. Laurels have not yet been earned…to deny a person the right to exercise his political freedom at the polls is no less a dastardly act as to deny a Christian the right to petition God in prayer... Our battle cry is ‘Let My People Vote.’”

Exercise your rights! Don’t pretend that not voting is sticking it to the man. If anything, not voting could kill you. Don’t pretend that not voting is patriotic. Not voting is a waste.

Wise up before it’s too late! Make your voice heard and vote tomorrow, November 6th, 2018.