WHEW!

Okay, fam. I just got back home from going to vote early today in the Bed-Stuy/Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, NY.

I got to the polling place at 10am and I finally left the building after voting at about 2pm. I was in line for 4 HOURS. This is unprecedented in my voting career. I have never, ever, in life stood in line this long to vote. When I left, the line was still four city blocks long.

Old Black men and women were handing out bottles of water and offering mesh folding chairs to people as we waited.

Black people who drive by honked their horns and cheered us on and clapped and recorded us as we were in line.

Little children outside playing were coming up to us asking us what we were in line for and when we said "to vote," they had this look in their eyes like they felt that they were witnessing something adult and important.

The polling place was accessible and had elevators.

My next door neighbor's granddaughter, freshman in college, was one of the volunteers working at the polling place. There were, in fact, a LOT of young Black people at the polling place, voting and working.

EVERYBODY WORE THEIR MASKS/FACE COVERINGS AND KEPT AT LEAST SIX FEET AWAY FROM EACH OTHER IN LINE AND INSIDE THE POLLING PLACE.

Folks were playing music and dancing and chatting and laughing to help pass the time.

BLACK PEOPLE SHOWED UP AND SHOWED OUT; WE WENT IN AND WE WENT AWF.

This experience reinforces and drives home a number of points for me:

1. Everyone is going to shut the fuck up about Black people and voting. You never had the right to:
a. blame Black people for disappointing voting outcomes that lay squarely in the laps of white people.
b. shame Black people using respectability politics and classist comparisons.

2. Election days need to be both national and local holidays, polling places should be accessible no matter where you live and should be open 24 hours so that no one has to miss out for any reason...

...and people should be able to vote from home in a way that is free, available, and safe. Our elected representatives need to create this bill and make it law. And if they don't, they need to be OUT.

3. This country is a fucking TRAVESTY. The fact that lines are four or more hours long to do something as fundamental to a functional democracy as vote is one of the clearest signs, among others, that this country is not a democracy.

4. The presidential election is important, but let's not fuck around and ignore the local elections that have a more immediate and direct impact on our everyday lives. Judges, sheriffs, council people, mayors, governors, congress people, district attorneys, etc.

They can make our lives livable or a living hell a lot quicker than a president can.

5. The way they be trying to stop me as a Black person from voting? That only motivates me to vote even more vigorously.

But I also know that voting ain't the solution to all of our problems and it's just one in a series of actions I have to take to push this country to be less violent, less avaricious, less cruel, and less deadly. Activism, in its many forms, is crucial to liberation.

6. We need to stop playing with these conservatives. These assholes are straight gutter with their bullshit and if they want to be gutter, then we got to be sewer. We need to stop bringing handshakes to a gun fight. If they and their allies do shit to fuck with elections--

whether it's gerrymandering, vote hacking, closing polling places, voter intimidation, Supreme and other court shenanigans, fucking with the mail, purposely mixing up ballots, throwing out absentee ballots, purging the voter rolls, disinformation campaigns...

...preventing incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people from voting, etc.--we need to go the fuck off in a way this country hasn't seen in ages and can't even imagine because they *think* we're docile, disorganized, and disunified...

...threatening EVERYTHING, especially their money, until they know what the fuck is up and they stop.

7. If the Democrats win this election, LET THIS BE THE LAST ONE in which they get to attain power on Black people's backs and then abandon us the moment they get what they coveted.

If Biden and Harris don't do something SPECIFICALLY beneficial to the ONGOING social, political, economic, psychological, and physical welfare of Black people--both domestically and internationally (stop fucking bombing Black nations and stealing their resources!)--

we should be done with the Democrats, abandon them completely, and start voting en masse, in our entirety, for third party candidates.

I left that polling place today joyful and angry AF. I'm damn near 50 years old. I could be somebody's grandparent. I don't have time. My patience is gone.

What did James Baldwin say?

"What is it you want me to reconcile myself to? I was born here almost sixty years ago. I'm not going to live another sixty years. You always told me it takes time...

"It has taken my father's time, my mother's time, my uncle's time, my brothers' and my sisters' time, my nieces' and my nephews' time. How much time do you want for your ‘progress’?”

Because frankly, y'all are out of time.

PERIOD.

With the gone-too-soon ancestors on my heart, fait accompli!

“Recent mishaps involving mail-in ballots seemed to drive many voters to the polls on Saturday. Some said they did not trust that their votes would be counted if they did not show up in person, and many did not want to wait until Election Day.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/nyregion/new-york-early-voting.html