If You Don't Vote, Can You Complain?

In an ideal world it would be easy to vote- it would be a federal holiday, and transportation would be provided by the government. Unfortunately it's not, so there's a lot of reasons people don't vote apart from pure apathy. You can only vote from prison in two states, and in ten states felons never regain their right to vote [1]. Working class individuals sometimes have little time to vote, and may be disenfranchised further by restrictive ID or registration laws, and low concentrations of polling places resulting in long wait times [2]. In 2012 there was a 15 point gap between those making over $75,000/year and those making under $50,000/year [3]. That is one area we need to work on- we need to make voting a readily available right which doesn't cost a large amount of time or any money. Voting needs to be just the start though.

The idea that voting is your civic duty and the principal way to make a difference can lead to apathy outside of the voting booths. Voting is a small part of achieving change- if you change just 4 people's minds, that's 4 votes to your one. Protests, rallies, citizen lobbying, building progressive organizations, civil disobedience, standing up to discrimination, and educating others are just a few methods of effecting change that carry just as much importance as a vote. Voting doesn't let you off the hook, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

If you are privileged, you especially have no excuse to avoid activism. Working class individuals often have time constraints, and can't afford to miss work. If you are upper class, you have been gifted with lots of privilege- use it in a beneficial way; to attack injustice.

Our civic duty is to do all we reasonably can to change what's wrong in our society. If you've been considering joining a progressive organization- do it! Is there a protest of a pipeline or of police brutality down the road? Join them! Do you have family members and friends that you feel are very misled? Change their minds!

Here's some two links to assist you in some ways of creating change:
Citizen Lobbying:
https://movetoamend.org/toolkit/citizens-lobbying-guide

An essay by Thoreau on civil disobedience, still very relevant:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper2/thoreau/civil.html


[1]: http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286
[2]: http://www.alternet.org/story/154661/2012's_newest_voter_suppression_trend%3A_close_polling_places,_don't_tell_voters
[3]: http://www.nonprofitvote.org/documents/2013/09/america-goes-to-the-polls-2012-voter-participation-gaps-in-the-2012-presidential-election.pdf