“The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery” (John Lewis)

How much does the right to vote freely matter to you right now?

I’d like you to imagine for a moment what it might have been like on August 28, 1963 to feel the emotion of John L. Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other black civil rights activists who led the famed Freedom March on Washington D.C. that day. For today America marks the sixtieth anniversary of that largely peaceful mass gathering of over 250,000 people where Reverend King delivered what’s widely known as the “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. So click on the link below and try to measure for yourself the emotional turmoil erupting on this historic day.

https://youtu.be/n82rgdbM9G4?si=xz1SVuVL0nfpdV7M

I would also challenge you to think about this historic Washington D.C. March as a model to consider for how much you care to resolve voting rights injustices that threaten our democracy in modern times today? For instance, does it seem important to you that African Americans continue to receive unequal treatment when it comes to the right to vote in much of our country now? Or how strongly do you react knowing that former Republicans led by former president Donald Trump organized an alleged conspiracy to oppress, threaten, and physically intimidate Americans of overwhelmingly minority descent in Atlanta’s Fulton County, Georgia in order to prevent an accurate count of their vote in the last Presidential election? On a nationwide scale, does it further bother you that young people, Black Americans as well as women, displayed lower voter turnout rates in recent midterm elections

In fact, it’s getting much harder these days for you as an American citizen to exercise your right to vote. For since, 2013, twenty state legislatures added over ninety restrictions on the right to vote, while “right wing” Republicans continued their quest to institute direct voter suppression measures to further exacerbate this problem. So on a practical level, how might you feel, for instance, if you were subjected to a severe limit on using mail-in ballots/drop boxes? Would you be okay then with waiting in a long line to vote in person or without doing so, possibly being disenfranchised from exercising freely your preferred candidate selections?

So we’ve reached another pivotal crisis point in our country’s Democracy that rivals those vehement Civil Rights protests once happening in our Nation’s Capitol on August 28, 1963. For I could never have envisioned in my lifetime, an ex – President indicted on multiple counts for spearheading an illegal effort to to decertify the official counting of votes across America in this last Presidential election! So I take my rights and responsibilities to vote very seriously. Will you similarly stand strong with me and really care?

Source Offering:

www.brennancenter.org (Brennan Center For Justice)  

www.brookings.edu (Brookings Institution)