Voting Is the Key to Ending Generational Suppression
Voting is one of the most powerful things people of color can do to change the world we live in
“But voting doesn’t work, it doesn’t really matter. Our vote doesn’t even count, and they’re going to do what they want anyway, regardless of what we vote for,” my mom let me know when I was 15. Like many other Latinx folks, my mother raised her children with the belief that voting would not make a difference. Voting was frowned upon because it was simply a waste of time. Your vote wouldn’t count, and no one would bother to listen, anyway.
I completely believed her, because growing up in a Latinx household, I was hardly allowed to question authority, and my mother, a very opinionated Mexican woman, was typically always right. My mother—and people of color alike—were oppressed in multifaceted ways, ultimately allowing for my voting beliefs to be suppressed at a young age. And that voter suppression strategy was not merely a coincidence, but rather an intentional tactic and direct threat to a democratic society. This passed-down belief, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call generational voter suppression at its finest.
Voting is merely one aspect of creating the type of change we hope to see in our…
