Katharine and I walked to our voting place early this morning, Springhill Community Center. As we headed up Dauphin Street we passed several women waiting at bus stops; waiting for a westbound bus presumably to take them to work, or a doctor’s appointment, or some other pressing responsibility. We wondered aloud when these people might vote. We make it hard in this state not having early voting, and most forms of identification required to vote involve some cost either directly or indirectly, which amounts to something of a poll tax. We arrived at the Springhill Community Center….a very sparse crowd….voters outnumbered by the poll workers. I was struck with the mural painted over the entrance to the gym. It was, best I could tell, a pictorial history of prominent Black Mobile citizens; there were also some symbolic representations of the journey of a people…birth in Africa…..slavery and civil rights…perhaps the faces in the mural included national figures as well…I just couldn’t tell….But clearly it was a representation of the lore, or some of the lore of a people…a people who have struggled mightily on the road to freedom.
I remember the first time I voted, and I remember what a thrill it was….the sense of being empowered to make a difference in the world in which I lived and moved and had my being….I remember the voting booth…blue with a blue curtain that one closed swiftly behind you with a lever, and then the iconic representations of the choices one had to make…choices that would perhaps in only small ways, but perhaps in big ways, who can know, affect the course of history. I can only imagine the thrill, so much more amplified than mine, that black people must have felt when they finally won the right to vote….the same for women….segments of our population who were not allowed the freedoms “men” had…I thank God for a country in which our constitutional polity can be moved to compassion, amended as the world amends, moved to further the cause of freedom for all.
Despite the many problems we have in this country which challenge our basic freedoms, the so-called powers and principalities: globalization of corporations who exercise exponentially more power over our political decisions than ever before; the shrinking middle class…the widening disparity of wealth…our failure to aggressively address global warming….our tottering system of education……despite these maladies among a host of others, today I still feel so thankful to be a U.S. citizen…to live in a country in which I have the right , a voice to affect the way we move forward into the future. True freedom is synonymous with empowerment….being empowered to live out our baptismal covenant which is, at its heart, to resist evil in our world, to model goodness by serving and recognizing the Christ in all persons, all persons made in the image of God, to do justice, to make peace, and to bring dignity to those who languish without it.
Our right to vote is an outward and visible sign of such freedom, such empowerment….and we dare not resort to crippling cynicism or take it for granted. Whatever the outcome of the election this evening…the people, free and empowered have spoken. What an incredible responsibility, and what an incredible privilege.
