"I’m not going to vote because the person who wins this election has no bearing on my life. I’m still gonna do me.” I overheard a coworker say this one day last week – during Maryland and D.C.’s early voting week. I was shocked to say the least. This Generation Y-er, non-millennial, African American male actually had the gall to say that this election, this right we were given to exercise political engagement in helping to choose who would govern us as a collective, had no bearing on his existence in these United States. Brah! C’mon now.

Flabbergasted, I walked away. I’ve spent my fair share of time engaging friends, family and strangers in conversations about each candidate’s platform; listening to differing opinion and explaining why I was voting. But on this day, I did not have the energy to spend trying to convince someone who was so steadfast in his convictions, that although this campaign has been one for the history books, at it’s core, this act of voting, this process, is indicative of what every American believes, that it is a basic right that should be exercised, enforced and promoted. More aptly, this American principle is what many African Americans and minorities believe to be true and it is a right we were denied for so long. Even as the Fifteenth Amendment affirms; the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” we were still prevented from voting through various discriminatory acts. So why after years of being denied our inherent right, after amendments were ratified, countless lives lost, movements created and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 instituted, would one still not want their voice heard? Silence speaks volumes.

And that, who we vote into office does not at some level affect our livelihoods is an absurd claim. Take for example the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Prior to President Obama’s healthcare reform law, our health care system could be equated to a state of uneasiness. Health insurance was not mandatory, in fact, thousands of Americans went without, including myself during a stint of unemployment after college. Regardless of your thoughts on the ACA’s efficiency and effectiveness, the systematic problems we faced regarding insurance, cost of benefits and disqualifying conditions were all too real. Now, with the advent of the new health care coverage, Americans are required to have insurance and if you don’t, you are penalized when tax time rolls around, so tell me again how the President of the United States and state and local representatives have no bearing on your life?

So on this Election Day eve and throughout the day on Tuesday, November 8th, I am most assuredly ready to downgrade some people from friends to associates because if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything and that’s not the type of company I keep.

If you can absentmindedly brush off the importance and power to vote and make a difference than you’re not who I thought you were in the first place. Good Day Sir. I said Good Day.

Nam

Writing since November 2016 · 1 story contributed