Greetings from beautiful, inexplicably 65-degree, Pittsburgh, PA! I write this from the porch of The Porch in Schenley Plaza, because I want you to vote.
As you probably know, the US presidential election is tomorrow. You can check out some of my thoughts on our candidates here, here, and here. But this blog post is not about them. This blog is about you. You and your beautiful vote.
If you are a US citizen, please, pease vote tomorrow. This election matters, and your participation in it matters. People have fought, been arrested, and died for your suffrage, some more recently than others. Honor the legacy of the American Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act, the Suffragettes, and everyone else who believed that you, and your voice, matter.
On Friday morning at 11am, I got on a Greyhound bus at South Station in Boston en route to New York City. I arrived in New York an hour and a half late, missed my irksome bus connection, spent almost six hours in the bus station trying to finish a ten-page legal memo for Legal Research and Writing that was due the next day at 5pm. Then I got on another bus at 11pm and got into Pittsburgh at 6:20am Saturday. The tireless Lindsey and Katharine picked me up from the bus station.
Why do all this, you ask? Why miss two days of law school classes, travel while I have a paper due, spend a total of over 25 hours on a bus, and get back to campus after an overnight bus ride 40 minutes before I have to get to class?
Because I’m registered to vote in Pennsylvania and didn’t get an absentee ballot. Because my right to vote matters to me, especially in this historic election. Because women were arrested, abused, and force-fed through the nose so that I could go to the polls tomorrow.
What’s your excuse, America? Let’s show up in record numbers tomorrow. Let’s shatter the expectations of those who project how many (or how few) of us will speak. Let’s make sure the outcome of this election really reflects what America means to us.
Vote.
Find your polling place at https://www.iwillvote.com/