Don’t tell me you’re not voting. We fought too hard for that right | Opinion
Americans woke up Wednesday to new political leaders in some states, and to more of the same in some others. Whatever, or whomever, you voted for, it is done. And it is time to come together and work as an undivided nation for the good of all.
On the day after the election, Mae, who is one of my oldest friends, called me. She was lamenting how one of her young relatives didn’t vote because she thought her vote “wouldn’t count anyway…”
“I was furious with her,” Mae said. “Of course, her vote won’t count. How could it count if she didn’t vote? If you don’t vote, then you can’t change things. I hate to say it, but Blacks must learn that we will always lag behind, if we can’t see the importance of our vote. One person, one vote. Just think — 1 million Blacks, 1 million votes. It’s just that simple.
“Voting is power. When we don’t vote, we let others take away our power,” she noted.
Mae, who grew up in Miami but taught for 30 years in Philadelphia public schools before retiring in 2001 and returning home, said she is “furious” at the low turnout in the Black community.
“It’s a disgrace to our foreparents, many of whom bled and died for the privilege of voting. Some of them died trying to get others to vote, without ever having the opportunity to vote themselves.
“It is also a disgrace to women. We’ve only been allowed to vote since 1920. That wasn’t that long ago. I wonder how many young people know how long it took for women to be able to get to vote?”
As I listened to Mae, I could feel her frustration. As a Black woman, I often feel that we Blacks are barely hanging onto the freedoms we fought so hard to achieve. I wish that more of us felt that way, then we would at least see the importance of standing up for our rights through our votes.
But because too few of us are angry enough to change our way of thinking — that our vote does not count — my heritage, and the heritage of other Americans whose roots are in other countries, is slowly being snatched away, book by book, story by story, flag by flag.
It’s as my friend Fabiola Santiago said in her column after the election and how Miami-Dade voted for DeSantis and the Republican ticket, flipping the county from blue to red, eroding our multiculturalism in the process:
“… Say goodbye to the proudly fluttering flags of the Americas during Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations… No black, yellow, and blue Bahamian flags to mark Black South Florida’s historic roots, either.“
And those of us who hail from the Motherland Africa can say goodbye to the flag that bears our colors of black, yellow, and red fluttering from flagpoles during Black History Month. While the flags add to our commemorations, I just hope that in the coming years we will still be allowed to celebrate Black History Month in our public schools. Some teachers have already told me that there is no such celebration in their schools. How sad.
Not only do such celebrations help to build self-esteem and hope for the future among Blacks, they also teach students about our American history.
One thing we have learned from the mid-terms is that truth really does prevail. And that Mr. Donald Trump does not have the power that he, and many of his followers, thought he had. That is because many people — though not nearly enough — rejected Trump’s often hate-filled rhetoric and voted to keep America united.
Many will remember the stash of documents Trump carted off to his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach after he lost the 2020 election. They wondered, like me, just what was he planning to do with the highly secretive documents? That question has yet to be answered.
Meanwhile, what’s next? Do we just lament over what could have been, or do we shake off the dust of Tuesday’s election and move forward? Together. While it is not easy losing at anything, I say, “Let us move forward.”
Still, when it comes to our elections, we must always remember that we are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. And while we don’t always agree on every issue, we must lay aside our differences and work on becoming that one nation under God.
And to those of you who didn’t vote because you thought that your vote didn’t matter, think about this: Val Demings lost the U.S. Senate race to Marco Rubio in Florida by about 1.2 million votes of the approximately 7.7 million total votes cast in that race, according to the Associated Press.
Voting matters.
READ MORE: Rubio beats Demings, makes Florida GOP history with third term in the U.S. Senate
Shame on judge who sent infant to Haiti
Speaking of doing the right thing, I still can’t wrap my brain around Broward County Judge Jose Izquierdo deciding to send a 9-month-old infant, who was born in America, to live with his poor maternal grandmother, who lives in the mountains in Haiti, a story reported by the Herald’s Jacqueline Charles and Jay Weaver.
The baby has a heart condition. The foster parents told the Herald they have spent more than $50,000 in legal fees trying to keep him in this country.
READ MORE: He’s 9 months old and a U.S. citizen. Why does Florida DCF want to send him to Haiti?
Given the conditions of Haiti, sending the child to a country where gang violence has closed many hospitals, and where there is disease and hunger and little clean drinking water, sending the sickly baby there would be like imposing a death sentence. Where is the judge’s heart?
“They are dumping the kid into an active volcano,” Dr. Jim Wilentz, a U.S.-based cardiologist who cares for children in Haiti with heart conditions and has no connection to the case, told the Herald.
As I said, where is the judge’s heart?