Let’s honor our voting-rights heroes by participating in democracy
With Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz as her vice-presidential running mate, the buzz around this year’s election is growing.
In Rifle, Silt and New Castle, an exciting local election is already underway: A bipartisan group of Garfield Re-2 School District residents took matters into their own hands last year and set in motion a Recall Election of a far-right school board member. Ballots have been mailed and are due August 27.
Nationally and locally, now is a great time to be a voter.
This month marks the anniversary of two milestones in our nation’s history of voting rights. The 19th Amendment was ratified in August 1920, granting women the right to vote. The Voting Rights Act passed in August 1965, expanding federal oversight of elections and banning the barriers that local and state governments had constructed to prevent Black people from voting.
It took decades of courageous activism by countless Americans to get these two major pieces of legislation passed – both of which moved our nation closer to its promise of treating everyone equally before the law and giving everyone a say in our government.
The first woman’s rights convention in the US took place in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Hundreds of women attended. Organizer Elizabeth Cady Stanton defined their goals as to protest “disgraceful” laws that “give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love.”
Convention participants passed 11 resolutions demanding equal rights for women, including the right to vote. It took over seven decades of brave activism – women wrote articles, circulated petitions, held house meetings, organized marches, undertook acts of civil disobedience, served jail sentences, and held hunger strikes – before they were finally granted the right to vote.
While the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, it wasn’t until 1965 that Black women and men were guaranteed the right to vote. Before that time, state and local governments used illegal voter suppression tactics such as poll taxes and literacy tests to keep Black people from voting. The Ku Klux Klan dominated many communities in the South, ensuring that Black citizens literally feared for their lives if they even attempted to register to vote.
In Selma, Alabama in the 1950s and ’60s, this reign of terror against Black people was particularly acute. The county sheriff, Jim Clark, recruited a posse of Ku Klux Klan members to operate as his “anti-civil rights force.” To raise awareness of the violent oppression that was keeping Black citizens from voting, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council organized a 50-mile march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery in March 1965.
Sheriff Clark, along with his officers, his posse, and Alabama state troopers, rode their horses directly into the crowd of 600 peaceful protestors. Wielding whips and nightsticks, they beat the demonstrators back to Selma. The entire brutal scene, soon to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” was televised to millions of Americans. After decades of local activism, the situation finally garnered national attention.
Two weeks later, 2,000 people set out on the three-day march from Selma to Montgomery, this time protected by the federal army, as ordered by President Lyndon Johnson. By August of that year, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.
Protecting our right to vote and pushing our nation to live up to its promise of voting rights for all is a struggle that continues to this day. Using Donald Trump’s false claims about massive voter fraud as cover, Republican state legislators have introduced over 250 pieces of legislation to restrict voting. A recent Florida law prevents ballot drop boxes from being used after work hours or on weekends. Texas banned all 24-hour voting centers, popular among low-income voters who work night-shifts.
Last month Trump told his supporters, “You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore…”
Whether you’re progressive or conservative, we can all do our part to make sure Trump doesn’t get elected and “fix it” so that our votes will never be counted again.
The countless activists who risked, and sometimes gave, their lives for the right to vote understood how precious that right is. Let’s honor those American heroes by casting our ballots in this year’s local and national elections and encouraging others to do the same.
This could be the year we elect the first Democrats to our Board of County Commissioners in over a decade and the first-ever Black woman as President of the United States. Be a part of this history in the making.
Debbie Bruell of Carbondale chairs the Garfield County Democrats and is a past member of the Roaring Fork Schools Board of Education.
