Your Vote Does Matter!

Photo #1: Three Civil Rights Workers

Some years ago, there was a brilliant PBS Television mini-series called "Eyes On The Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965." The series has a companion book that came along with it, filled with photographs and commentary about that period in American history and those heroic black people who took to the streets, got arrested, got beaten, and in some cases got killed trying to get equal rights and, more importantly, voting rights for blacks and all racial and ethnic minorities in this country.

I wish I had a copy of this book for all of those people who feel as though their vote doesn't matter. It certainly mattered to somebody. If your vote didn't matter, nobody would have been murdered to make sure that you were too scared to vote. If your vote didn't matter, then that travesty in Florida in the year 2000 would have never been attempted. Clearly your vote does matter... it matters a lot.

Photo #2: Medgar Evers Funeral

In particular, when I read about Mississippi and how hard they resisted voting rights for African-Americans. Much to my surprise, I learned that African-Americans actually out numbered whites in many of the counties in parts of Mississippi and, if allowed to vote, they could have voted all of those redneck sheriffs and the white "Citizen's Council" members out of power. This is why the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the white "Citizen's Council" fought so hard, even resorting to murder, to run the large African-American population away from the polls. Your vote does matter... it mattered to somebody if they were willing to bomb churches, snatch three guys (Photo #1: Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner) off the street and murder them, burn people's houses down, and assassinate two NAACP leaders (Photo #2: Medgar Evers and Photo #3: Vernon Dahmer).

Photo #3: Vernon Dahmer's Home Firebombed

As I leaf through this book and look at the photos of all those brave people... black and white, young and old... who risked their lives riding into foreign territory so that I could vote, it fills me with both pride and gratitude. I know that I wrote a post something like this before but, I can't stress enough how important it is that your voice be heard by tomorrow. I know that some people have already voted and I applaud them. I am most certainly going to vote tomorrow because I'm an American citizen, it's my right to vote, and it's the way to make my opinion heard. I can rage on and on on this blog and that's cool... but, my vote will most definitely make my opinion known and go toward exacting that change.

People are afraid of change. They are afraid of the masses of free people having some say in their government... that's why they fight so hard to crush any dissent. There is a fellow blogger now being held under virtual house arrest in Nigeria because he has dared challenge the position of that country's government. Here we are... able to assemble freely, vote, and blog... and some of us don't want to take advantage of that opportunity.

Vote tomorrow. Freedom ain't free. There are several people lying in their graves now who might still be alive and who gave their lives so that all of us could vote. If you don't do it for any other reason, do it for them. They gave so much and it's an insult to their memories not to vote.