IF YOU ARE TEMPTED to think casting a vote doesn’t matter…think on this:  Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, was the first black woman admitted to the bar in Mississippi (1965).  She said in I DREAM A WORLD, ” People would do their voter registration and they would be thrown off their plantations the next day.  In 1964 and 1965 courageous ordinary people gave up their little homes and their food, withstood bombings and shootings, and lost everything to exercise their right to vote.

Edelman said, “Ordinary women of grace are, in a sense, my real role models. What always struck me is how unbitter they were. They had the capacity to keep struggling.  I think that is a message that this quick-fix culture needs, this culture that thinks things should be solved instantly or cheaply.  They’re always searching for cheap grace.”

The time she references is just fifty years ago.  And still, there are disincentives being put in place to keep people from voting.  It is a singular privilege and right of an American citizen.  Vote. Women have had the right since 1920 thanks to decades are hard-won work and the 19th amendment.  Honor those who made it possible: vote.