This isn’t primarily what this post is really about, but that’s where I’m starting: four years ago, I voted for Obama. Well, back up. I didn’t just vote for him.
I campaigned for a year prior to his election. I served as a Precinct Chair, and I was a delegate all through the primary right up to the state convention in Austin, TX. I registered fellow citizens to vote, I knocked doors, I made phone calls- I was all in. I did all of this while working full time and going to graduate school full time, Dave Ramsey beans and ricing my ass off, which qualifies me as a special kind of Grade A Type A person. But I digress.
Campaigning this vocally in Dallas, Texas meant experiencing a lot of dissent from my fellow citizens. I was harassed in parking lots and on highways for my Obama bumper sticker, I had people at stoplights yell at me for it, and I can’t repeat the things I was called (always by men, always only when I was alone) when I wore my Obama shirt in the weeks right before the election.
This year? I did my best the year before I left but then the summer tragedy happened. I moved to Albania and anti-climactically voted a month early via e-mail after filling out my overseas ballot online.
A little less involved (to say the least) far less interesting, and yes, much less work, but the end result is the same: Obama is in.
One thing that isn’t the same? On that night, in 2008, in the middle of all our “Yay, he won!” happiness, we received news via text message from a Californian friend that Prop 8 had unfortunately passed. While everyone was celebrating, our little group was suddenly not feeling quite so hopeful.
This time around, instead of a slap in the face of progressive social policy, we have the triple play of awesome that is Maine, Maryland, and Washington legalizing marriage equality. I can’t adequately express how this makes me feel, so I’ll let someone more eloquent take it away.
“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”-C. Chavez
Narrator’s Note August 2020: This was originally published on November 8, 2012, on Blogger. As I am moving all my writing to this new website, I am sitting here with tears in my eyes re-reading this. We’re now living in a world where marriage equality is legal all over the US, and it’s unreal to remember how long it took to get there. My sister and uncle both died before ever having known full rights under the law in their own country. It’s infuriating that marriage equality is still out of reach for so many people around the world. In the context of BLM movements, I can only hope that we can see the need to keep moving forward for equality for all oppressed and marginalised groups. I am posting this about two months before the 2020 elections, and feeling very heavy.
