VOTE!

If you live in a place where there is an election today, please take a minute to go to your polling place and vote.

Science Boy and I went this morning. We walked in the freezing cold to the local grade school, cast our votes and trudged back home.

I am a woman. Science Boy is African-American. Even 100 years ago, we would have been denied any voice in an election. Women in this country didn't get the vote until 1920. African-Americans technically got the vote in 1870, but everyone knows that's not really what happened. It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to make the right of African-Americans to cast votes (in a country they helped build) a reality.

So, it's been only 86 years that women in the US have been allowed to vote. African-Americans have been allowed to cast a vote only in the past 41 years. Knowing how hard our forebears fought for this right, knowing that people spoke out and rallied and sometimes died for our right to vote... How can we dishonor their sacrifices by not voting? And how can this country claim to fight for democracy overseas when we do not honor the rights we have here?

Please, if you have an election in your city today, VOTE!