Title
Your Vote Is Your Business
Good morning! It’s Tuesday, November 3rd.
Election Day.
And so instead of the news, I want to tell you a story I’ve told a million times before and will tell a million times after.
Because it's one of my favorite stories, and I think it's the exact motivation you need to understand how incredibly important all of our voices are in this election, how hard-fought our right to be able to cast a ballot was.
Because today, on this day, we are going to decide if we will be, as we have been, a democracy or if we will fall to fascism that is already rising. We cannot understate the importance of this election.
So let’s go back 61 years.
To February 18, 1965. A young father, civil rights activist, and church deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, is protesting alongside his mom, sister, grandpa, and 500 others in Selma, Alabama. They're there because of a man named James Orange, who's in jail for enlisting student aides for voting rights and registration drives. Sure, James Orange's arrest record might say otherwise, but what he's actually arrested for is being Black and working to get other Black Americans registered to vote.
Because it's February of 1965. Poll taxes had just been made illegal the year before, so now literacy tests became the move for white supremacists to keep eligible Black Americans from being able to cast their constitutionally promised vote.
When we talk about literacy tests, we talk about things like being asked to recite the entire Constitution. And yes, that was one version of the test, and yes, that is still very hard on its own (you do it) but a typical test wasn't that. I mean, again, reciting the Constitution isn't easy either, but a typical test was harder because it was written in a way that was meant to be confusing and meant to give the power to the election official. A literal fail-safe was written into the rules. Let me give you an example.
From the State of Louisiana Literacy Test, here's question number 1 "Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence." Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence. Even reading it is very confusing. You only have 10 minutes to take this test, and there are a lot of questions that are different but similarly confusing. Also, if you can figure out what this question actually is, there's one part in it that is supposed to be tricky. There's a fail-safe in every single one of these questions.
"Draw a line around." So, is it a circle or is it a line? One wrong answer. Just one wrong answer in the election official's eyes. So draw a line around. Oh, I meant line, you drew a circle, that's it. That's your wrong answer, and that's a wrap on being able to vote.
So again, while his arrest record may have said otherwise, James Orange was arrested for being Black and having a voice. So Jimmie Lee Jackson, his family, and 500 others went on a peace walk from church to the jail where Orange was being held, which was a distance of about a block. It was literally called a peace walk.
On their walk, they were met at the post office by a line of police officers and state troopers who began to beat the protesters. Jimmie Lee, as well as his 16-year-old sister, his mom, and his grandpa, all managed to make their way into Max Café behind the church, where they continued to be followed by state troopers. After being thrown to the floor, Jimmie Lee watched as troopers went after his sister and his mom. When he went to go protect his mom, state trooper James Fowler shot him. Even after he was shot, police continued to beat him. He died in the hospital eight days later.
On March 7, between 5 and 600 protesters went out again. Led by John Lewis, they planned to march from Selma to Montgomery to highlight the need for voting rights and to protest the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Just outside of Selma, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, protesters were beaten by state troopers and county posse. We know this march by its other name: Bloody Sunday.
A second march was scheduled to take place on Tuesday the 9th. About 2,500 marchers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., went out to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, held a short prayer session, and then turned around. It was a signal that they would not give up, but also a way to stay within their court order. This became known as Turnaround Tuesday.
Finally, on March 21, with a green light from the White House, 8,000 people gathered at Brown Chapel AME to begin their walk from Selma to Montgomery. They started with 8,000 people. They made it into Montgomery on the 24th, and on the 25th, more than 25,000 people marched with them from St. Jude to the state capitol building. And it was there that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his how-long-not-long speech.
And while you might not know the speech by its name, you probably know this line, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." However, I think a better line for this particular moment, the one that we're living in right now, is this one. "The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. I know you are asking today how long will it take. I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.”
On that bridge, marching alongside the protesters, were volunteers with a group called the Medical Committee for Human Rights. It was a small group founded by doctors Robert Smith, James Anderson, and Tom Levin. The group was originally created to help administer medical aid during the Freedom Summer the year before.
That was the 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. It was dangerous work, both registering Black voters in the South in 1964 as well as being a medical volunteer at the time. But its impact was huge. The MCHR established a desegregated public health clinic in Mississippi for the first time, and a study decades later found the infant mortality rate among Black babies decreased by 65% between 1965 and 1971.
Only about 100 volunteers went to Mississippi in the summer of 1964. of those 100 volunteers, one of them was Carmen, who spent the summer of 1964 registering voters and providing medical care for protesters who were beaten. Carmen was my mom's best friend, who became a second parent to me after raising three very impressive kids of her own. Carmen told me 15 years ago, in one of our last conversations, to just do something. Do something that mattered.
And I'm telling you all of this in this very long and not at all newsy news episode because of this fact: unless you are a land-owning white male, your right to vote has never been promised. And as we know, that is still not the case. This year, we watched voting rights be whittled and whittled down – through the courts ruling on the Voting Rights Act. Through the gerrymandering that president requested and states followed through on. Through voter ID laws and Trump’s threats that were shut down by the courts but still managed to sew confusion.
And it’s happening for one reason and one reason only. And it's the same reason that Martin and John went to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It's the same reason that Jimmie Lee went on that peace walk. It's the same reason that Carmen went to Mississippi.
Your vote matters. It's the power. It's your voice. When you cast your ballot, you're not casting it on your own. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. You cast your ballot for your future and the future of everyone you love. And you are carried to that ballot on the shoulders of everyone who fought for you to have that right. Your voice matters. What you do with it matters. Democracy depends on you. It will not wait for you.
I’m recording this Monday night. I don't know how I'll be feeling on Tuesday night, but in this moment I am feeling hope and optimism.
Life requires optimism. I do a daily news podcast for FUN. It requires optimism. It requires believing that our best days are ahead of us, because they are certainly not behind us for everyone. And a "best day" that does not include everybody is not my version of a best day. Our best days are ahead of us. We are going to get there.
Today is an incredibly huge day. We are at the turning point of our country. Today we decide if we will continue to be the democracy that we fought for, or will we fall to fascism. And we are the deciders of this moment.
Polls don't decide this. Pundits don't decide this. Kims and their podcasts don't decide this. Voters decide it. We make our own future.
Today, if you have not cast your ballot already, today is the day that you decide that you are going to be an active participant in your future. Let's go get it done.
I'm prerecording because it's Election Day. How could I not? So once again, instead of doing the news, I'm going to talk about one specific thing. Because you know what everyone else is talking about on the news right now? Polling. You know what really doesn't matter right now? Polling.
And yeah, big picture, of course it matters, but they don't elect officials. They don't pass or hard pass on measures. We do that. Our votes do that. We cast our ballot and get to decide what our future looks like. So no, I don't want to talk about polling, except it's Election Day, so I know myself and I know I'm going to want to talk about polling. But not here. Here I'll pretend not to care.
Actually, what I want to do today is offer, like, a calming voice. And I'm prerecording it because there's no way I'll be calm on Tuesday. I'm the best and worst version of myself on Election Day. I'm firing on all cylinders and also desperate for the numbers while also reminding everyone that it's actually good when returns take a while. That's how we know democracy works.
I want you to take care of yourself today. I'm going to be watching all these returns come in like a broken little Election Day robot, because I love it. So if you just want to know where things actually stand, I'll be updating on @hereswhatshappeningnews on Instagram.
There will be very calm but accurate results. So if you want to know how things are progressing in a calm manner, that is where you go. If you just want to wait and know how everything shook out, I don't know when the next episode of the news will be, but Friday at the latest I will have it for you. And if we don't know everything, that is okay. What do we always say? When we know more, we'll know more.
Friday at the latest I will at least let you know where things stand. But I can tell you right now where things stand. On Tuesday morning, ahead of the results, I can tell you where things stand. We're going to be okay. It's Tuesday. Guess what? Wednesday is coming. I promise you, no matter what these results look like, we're going to be okay.
So listen, do what you need to do today. You need to vote, of course, but other than that, buddy, you're good. You did the thing. You cast your ballot. That was the most important thing to do. The next most important thing to do is to take care of yourself.
There's a lot of energy just kind of running around on the day. You turn on the news, it's going to be high energy. If you know that that is not what you're looking for today, that's fine. It is okay. It's good, actually. That's healthy. That's great. So take care of yourself.
We're going to do the work because this moment is not just a moment. It's every moment we have ever had and every moment we will ever have. It is us and also the generations after us. And we have to do the work of making sure that they have the best possible future for them and for us.
You might be feeling a lot of things. I am feeling an entire range of emotions, which is confusing to me, as normally I don't like to have any emotions, and yet I'm feeling every single one of them. Something that helps me, and maybe this will help you, is that when I am feeling stressed out or worried or nervous or every other feeling of that ilk, I ask myself, what can I do about this? How can I use this feeling to increase voter turnout?
Time, money, influence. Everybody has one of those things. You might have two, you might have all three, you have at least one, I promise. Today, please use time if you've got it, money if you can, influence amongst your friends, family, community, online, in person, however you do it. Let's go get this done. Let's go win ourselves an election, and let's hold this democracy.
I'm going to leave you with one last line from Martin Luther King Jr.'s how-long-not-long speech. Quote, "The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going." It's a great day to go be a voter.
Go vote. It'll make you feel strong and powerful. And take care of yourself because you are strong and powerful.
And after that, after all these episodes of me telling you how great and vital your voice is, after you cast your ballot and told the world that you are the decider of your own future, how on earth could I be anything other than proud of you?