Are you voting this year??
If you’re not then…. WTF… and I really mean What. The. Fuck?
Since I am putting my thoughts out into the world I don’t want to come off all judgmental. I don’t want to start off this post by saying “In times like these, especially if you’re brown, how tf could you not vote?!?!…do you watch the news??” I am trying to reflect though, and thinking back to my first time being able to vote. I turned 18 the year black jesus ran for office. Voting for our first and only black president was my first experience in casting a ballot, and after his first election all the media talked about was how Barack Obama ‘moved the young people!’ History had been made and a change was gon’ come! Then four years later we did that ish all over again..it was just as amazing as the first time. It could not be dismissed that without the black and brown vote there would have been no second term. We came out in record numbers and made sure our votes counted. We made change and it was so damn beautiful.
I guess im thinking back on all of this because im also realizing for those who will be voting for the first time in 2020… yikes. In 2008 I knew that I could trust that my vote would matter with about a 95% certainty. (This is American so I cant give it a 100%) The situation we are curretnly looking at is nothing like that of twelve years ago. I can understand how some people could be thoroughly convinced their vote doesn’t matter. Or that this whole voting process is just a rigged conspiracy.. because it kinda seems that’s way at the moment.
BUT! Still… this shit IS important. It’s not even dramatic to say it’s a matter of life or death in this day. The person in office controls how the nation handles a pandemic.. the president has a say in how other members of authority conduct themselves, example; the police. The president is supposed to offer security during times of unrest and uncertainty. The president has the future in their hands. Why wouldn’t we take time to make sure we have input in that???
You could be pretty apathetic to politics, economics, racial and social injustices, and the list goes on: but just to know that in the times of when an actual global “plague?” Has spread all over the planet and we have someone in office who tells you to drink bleach while our community dies by the thousands and not take any action is a frightening level of apathy and dare I say it: ignorance.
Not judging.. just thinking.. damn we should really care more if not for ourselves at least for the others who are affected and suffering.