Read on Twitter
black americans have been voting in a country not designed with them in mind, not set up for their success, and actively lobbying for their failure since we were able to start voting again legally (but not in reality) “unencumbered” after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
and even before that starting from the supposed beginnings of the right to vote in the 14th amendment.
I didn’t not live then but the genetic memory of that is in me. that hope and determination and fight is in me.
nothing in my DNA tells me that i will lose. everything in me feels the surge of my ancestors singing out that we shall not be moved, that we will overcome, that freedom will ring.
i don’t know the world i will see in my lifetime, but i know that regardless the work is long and hard and constant. And every setback and every win -is not an end. i know that there is much work to do. there always has been and there always will be.
i know if you believe in joint liberation and understand what that means - or are down to do the work to understand it - then you are on my team. joint liberation is active, is constant, is every day. it is not easy work.
it is not a vote. it is a vote AND it is everything else that is hard. and the less hard your daily life is, the more you have to give.
privilege is a responsibility. it needs to be used. giving into despair is less and less acceptable the more access to resources you have.
so a lot of the white folx I see out here despairing particularly- buck up. welcome to voting IN SPITE OF. LIVING IN SPITE OF. welcome to a history and tradition of voting and trying and fighting when all the odds are stacked against you. for that has ALWAYS been our reality.
