Voting

The Democratic Convention is happening in Boston and I am not as excited as I usually am at the prospect of voting for a new President of The United States. When I was 15 I attended a camp for girls of that age who were elected to attend from schools throughout the state of NY because they displayed leadership qualities. We were thought to be the best of the best. The camp was located in Albany and I had to travel from my home to 42nd Street and Vanderbilt to get on a chartered bus that would take me to upstate NY. Me and about 30 other young women were driven to SUNY Purchase University Campus, and it is at this site that I learned about the electoral process of running a government. There were about 350 girls from all over NY State and I was one of about 10 from the NYC area. It was a week that lives on in my mind as it invigorated me into believing in government as a tool that can bring about change. The camp's duration was a week, and during that time we were taught how a state government and electoral process was run. It was interesting to all who attended and allowed for camaraderie between girls from vastly different cultures. Most of the young women I encountered were very nice and accepting of the vastly different cultures of the people the met, and for some, I gathered, it was their first time encountering cultures of people different than their own. One of my experiences at this camp was not my first encounter with racism. I was asked were I was from by an upstate NY young woman, and when I replied NYC she further inquired what part, and when I told her Harlem she stated I didn't act like someone from Harlem. I asked incredulously how is one from Harlem supposed to act. She blushed, and I just stared at her and blinked in anger, and then I just turned and left the area. Mario Cuomo, the then Governor of New York State came to the camp and gave a rousing speech on the electoral process of NY State and his commitment to it and the young ladies he was addressing. He admonished us to become a part of the process by believing in the system as he, the son of an Italian immigrant, had. He beat racism by being a part of the system. He talked powerfully of being thought as less than because of his heritage, and beating the odds to become the person he was before us: an elected official who could go on to being The President of The United States. He changed the system and the government with his being a part of the process. He voted at eighteen and got involved with the political process. And he wanted us to do the same. His speech really awakened a light, a fire, a torch, in me, and I have never forgotten his words. I and everyone else in that auditorium gave him a standing ovation at the conclusion of his speech. During that week not only did I learn about the running of a government, but how to deal with persons diplomatically. It was a camp that I profited from because I took so much from it. It allowed me to learn about the electoral process we, as American, hold so dear to us, and exposed me to its mechanics. I learned from that experience to appreciated and respect the process of government. And to utilize it for change.

I remember when I turned 18 I was so excited and dutifully cast my first vote. I envisioned things changing because I and many other had cast our votes and we would be heard. Some 20 years later, I don't believe the theory has not panned out, and things seemed to have not changed. Nothing has changed. I was driven home a few night ago by a co-worker who has a nice car. It was not late and there were many people outside as it was a warm summer night. When we pulled up in front of my building, we noticed a police car had been following us for 20 feet, and was inputting the license of the car we were in into their on board computer. The people on the sidewalk and we the occupants of the car went into high alert. I departed from the car and my co-worker departed from the street leaving behind the cruser. I stopped in front of my building with some of the older neighbors of my building who discussed with me, perplexed, why the police were not out and about looking for real criminals and instead were bothering two women who work six days a week, who were not criminals, but were profiled as such because they were in a nice car. I knew that something is wrong with the system, and it has been for a long time. Many nights when walking home from the train I see all kinds of crimes being committed in my neighborhood such as the sale of drugs, prostitution, etc, but I often don't see the police who could stop such things from happening when I am forced to witness such indignities. Crime has been a persistent element in my neighborhood. It has ebbed and flowed, but essentially I have seen the same conditions in my neighborhood. Many who are more knowledgeable in the undercurrent of crime say there is much more crime than I will ever know going on in my neighborhood as I am someone who does not mix with that type of crowd, and that should I ever know the extent of the crime involved, I would be shocked. Much of this crime grows from people who are disillusioned, unemployable, and without hope. I do not condone the actions of the person committing these crimes because of the qualities of their lives. I do however understand that much has not happened to make people more hopeful.

Many are doubled and tripled up in apartments. It is common to have three families, many inter-related, living in a two bedroom apartment, many short on food, and hope. The schools in my area are such that I take my children on a 12 mile trek to school in Manhattan as my Bronx schools are horribly inadequate. At one point because they were all too young to travel by themselves, it was a 4 hour round trip, every day 5 days a week, for me or their father to get our children to school. And we did this trek for 6 years.

I voted that first time, many years ago, to change these types of inadequacies: overpriced housing leading to tripling up of occupants, no jobs leading to people going hungry, taxes inappropriately assessed and distributed leading to underfunded schools. All of these inadequacies ultimately lead to people committing crimes. Is it right that someone that is poor commits crime to thwart the ill effect of not having money? No. However all can understand the origins of the thought that begat the crime. If people don't think they have hope, they will not do hopeful things. A person not believing in the greatness he was born with will try to snuff out that greatness in someone else. He will steal from his neighbor because he has no respect for anyone or anything. I voted that first time to change our government for the better. I voted that and many other times thereafter to bring about change of a flawed system. Today I am not enthusiastic about voting. The system has not brought about change, and there seems to be more despair. The system continues to be flawed.

My daughter asked recently if I will vote, and I told her I don't know. She was shocked and said that she knows I always vote. I replied that for the first time since I've been eligible to vote, I have thought perhaps I will not. Maybe I will take a pass this go around because the government and the power of its constituents that Mario Cuomo told me they have has not been witnessed by me. She said to me she wanted to learn how to vote and asked if I could take her with me to the booth when I voted. I agreed. I never thought those years ago at that camp, when I was filled with the spirit of citizenship, that I would ever be so disillusioned that I would not want to vote. I am surprised that I will only vote to show my daughter how to, and not foremost, to participate in the process of improving and changing the system. I want to pass on the torch of enthusiasm of citizenship to my daughter, and hopefully she can bring back the fire, as mine has diminished greatly.