I didn’t vote. I have voted Democrat in every election since Al Gore’s loss to George Bush in 2000. I was 21. I was one of the millions who voted President Obama into office for both terms. I did not vote in this election, and I am not sorry. I have been called lazy, stupid, ignorant, a traitor to the American people and so many other colorful words I’d rather not print. I’ve sat and watched as friends and my social media network turned up their nose to those of my ilk. Us non-voters who so selfishly and single-handedly put this election in the GOP’s pocket. How effortless, how convenient, how American to blame everyone else: non-voters, third party voters, black Americans, Latinos, and so on and so forth than openly admit that the DNC was force feeding a presidential candidate that many Americans could not stomach.
I did not vote by default. See, I had every intention of voting. On fulfilling my constitutional right as an American citizen as so many have been pointedly called to do. Except that voting is not a constitutional right. That tired explanation to get folks to vote against their conscience because it’s a right is not a right at all. Ask the 3.5 million American citizens of Puerto Rico still living under colonialism who can fight for the United States in war but not vote for its president. Ask the people of any U.S. territory about their non-existent constitutional right to vote while being tax-paying citizens. Territories like the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam, territories that amass a population that surpasses those of 22 states. Ask the millions of formerly incarcerated citizens demarcated by an unjust crime bill and who have already paid their debt to society why they do not have the right to vote. Or just ask the Supreme Court who after the debacle of the Gore vs. Bush election claimed:
“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the president of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the electoral college.”
I did not vote, and though it was by default ― MTA as per usual having the same sort of issues they always have that delayed my commute by three hours and prevented me from getting to the polls in time ― I still would not have voted for Hillary Clinton. I would NEVER have voted for Trump, either. Even if I voted third party, which was my intention, it wouldn’t have made a difference, as New York state has long been considered a “blue” state and therefore safe. There are many reasons people did not vote. Let us ask the poor, overworked, disenfranchised who cannot afford to be docked for lateness or for missing a day why they didn’t make a concerted effort to vote. If voting were indeed a constitutional right, why make Americans jump over hurdles to be able to do so?
I considered never writing this piece. I considered not even exercising my own right to free speech. Over-analyzing all the rhetoric that may be thrown my way by folks who somehow want to point fingers and blame people like me for the very reason someone like Trump is in office. I am the daughter of a gay woman. I have family members who are Muslim-American. I am the mother of four brown boys. I am working class and, according to who you ask, uneducated because I have never obtained a college degree. I may not have the language of academia, but I have the ability to think critically. This great nation has sat idly by while water poisons its children. This great nation still disrespects the sanctity of Native land. This great nation has divested resources better acclimated to ensure the stability of low-income communities and invested it into the prison industrial complex. This great nation has decimated my island because of corporate greed.
We are so hungry for representation that even a cosign looks like inclusion. The democratic party threw away the opportunity for Americans to have a chance at real progress by superimposing all the fallacies that existed in a candidate such as Hillary Clinton. That’s where the blame should begin. White folk overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and that includes pseudo-feminists, non-collegiate and college educated, poor and rich and let’s not forget religious conservatives itching to defund Planned Parenthood. The intersections in which white supremacy and those invested in its ideals were able to come together and trump the democratic vote is where the blame should end. And now this is where the work truly begins. See you at mid-term elections.