Vote early, Vote often. -Al Capone, et. al.

I sit at my desk this morning below the picture that I sometimes forget is posted on my bulletin board. It is a picture of American soldiers inside the belly of a C-130 airplane strapping down the flag draped coffins of dead american soldiers. I keep this picture near me to remind me of what younger, braver citizens are doing for me every day around the world. I am sometimes left-wing, sometimes right-wing, depending on which issue you approach me on, but above all that, I am dedicated to the ideal of democracy. We have fought and died for the right to choose. Well, here we are on an historic day (as are all elections in my opinion) during which we must all exercise that right. I received an email today from my 67 year old mother, which I will publish a portion of here:

I was number 158 to vote today at 7:30 this morning. Afterwards I sat in my car with tears running down my face, realizing that I had gone to school as a fourth grader in a segregated school system where I had few friends because I would not engage (thanks to my wonderful parents) in the after school game of going by the "colored school" and yelling the N word. I voted for the first time for JFK, (the first and only to date practicing Roman Catholic who it was said couldn't be elected because of his religion) and for the first Japanese American Senator - Senator Daniel Inouye. I graduated from college in the middle of the civil rights movement which finally brought about the voting rights act, yet despite that, blacks still had a real tough time voting. I went from undergraduate school [at the University of Hawaii] where I lived in a multicultural reality (with Barack Obama Sr. I might add) then on to graduate school where the reality was just beginning to move toward equality but surely wasn't there yet.

And today I had the privilege of voting for a man who happens to be, in reality, bi-racial, but in the minds of people, an African American, who announced yesterday with his biracial Indonesian sister, the death of their white grandmother. Wow!

I never thought I would be able to say that in my lifetime. I don't care how you vote, but please don't forget to vote. Whoever you vote for, you will have voted in an election I never thought possible.

-Mom

If the deaths of young men and women, and the lifetimes of struggle for equality that have defined this nation do not move you to vote in today's election, then please, vote for the simple reason that if you do not speak, you may as well not have a voice.