Did My Vote Count?

I cast my vote yesterday at Fire Station No. 3.  Election officials had raised the garage doors to a beautiful Mississippi day, and it made for a nice open-air exercising of my “right” as an American citizen.  It took me about 45 minutes, including the drive across town from work–and that was a long time for my neck of the woods.  I went during the lunch hour expecting some sort of a line, but there were only two people in front of me at the M-Z table.  Yes, I live in a precinct requiring only two alphabetical tables.  The reason it took me so long was that my name was not on the registered voter list.  

I’ve voted in this location before, but only by affidavit.  I had also failed to return the change of registration form I got in the mail after the last election, so the absence of my name was only a minor surprise.  The ladies checked my street name to make sure I was at the right polling station, and then called over an apparently more authoritative poll worker to find out what to do.  He decided to call the Chancery Clerk’s office to determine how best to afford me my one vote.  The Clerk confirmed that another affidavit ballot would be the answer, and I was ushered to a table for further instructions.  The table happened to be in full sun, and I was somewhat blinded by the ballot.  But, having come this far, I was eager to let my voice be heard.  After a brief disappointment that I would not get to use the new electronic voting machines (yes, further evidence of my rural setting), I grabbed my nubby Ebony pencil, ready to avail myself of my enfranchisement.  

Another poll worker showed me the parts of the ballot envelope to complete with my personal information and after a few “hey theres,” “hellos,” and “I’m retired nows” in response to passing voters, he demonstrated how to fold the ballot so that the poll worker initials were in the right spot.  Interesting that no one requested to see any identification, but I suppose Starkville, Mississippi is not a hot bed for over-zealous ACORN voter registration volunteers.  The poll worker signed his name below mine on the completed ballot envelope and gave me a sheet of paper explaining affidavit ballots.  He pointed out the telephone number that I could call “not less than 10 days from this date” to find out (in his words) if my vote counts.  Hmmm.

After a few more reiterations of how to insert my folded ballot (apparently the location of the initials is crucial), I was left to my own voting devices.  When I had finished blackening circles for president, a senator, a representative, a few judges and a hospital bond issue, I inserted my ballot appropriately into the envelope and called over the poll worker.  He again reminded me of the phone number determining if my vote would count and directed me to the ballot box.  It was not the rough wooden ones I’d used in previous years, but a nice, blue canvas one with a seamed slit in the top.  I dropped the envelope in, said my thank yous, and voting was complete.

After what seems like years of campaign coverage, the election is over.  Regardless of which camp you favored, we now know the next president of the United States (and not just because CNN said so.)  Barak Obama has already been declared the 44th president, and I’m still left to wonder (and wait ten days to discover): did my vote count?  

This election was different, somehow.  News reports and candidate speeches indicate that there was a healthy voter turn-out, particularly among younger voters who haven’t been as engaged in the process in previous years.  The sheer months of constant news coverage has given the impression of greater interest this time around.  We’ve been trained by the last two presidential elections to monitor electoral votes, and cable news has been sporting the maps for weeks now.  I noticed that even in my small town precinct there was fallout from voter fraud concerns.  My polling station offered a tabletop display of voting “rules”, the reasons voter identification might be required and the appropriate documents or cards that might qualify.  I haven’t noticed that before.  There was also a huge stop sign printed with a warning that state law prohibits campaigning of any kind within 150 feet of the polling station.  That’s always been the case, but given the overload of media coverage, ad spots and road signs we’ve seen for almost two years now, that 150-foot campaigning-free zone around Fire Station No. 3 was a welcomed relief.

Still,  I’m left to wonder:  did my vote count?  A winner has been announced in most races.  Mississippi belonged to John McCain for the night, and not by a close margin.  News anchors had all but declared Obama the next president before the polls had even closed in California.  The final word on whether my ballot was thrown out will not be determined for 10 more days.   So, did my vote count?  Was it worth the time if my state’s six electoral votes are only a drop in the margin of victory bucket?  Was my trip to Fire Station No. 3 important even it had little to no effect on the election’s outcome?  

The answer:  Yes.  My vote does count.  It may not be the one vote that moves the ticker to 50.1%, but it counts.  Even ten days later, it counts.  It counts when it motivates me to form an opinion.  It counts when it makes me consider how government will effect my life.  It counts when it engages me in debate over where our country is and where it’s going–even when I’m only debating the tv screen.  It counts when it entwines me in an historic moment–for African Americans, women and elder statesmen, nay, for all Americans.  It counts when it attaches responsibility to my citizenship.  It counts when it inspires me to write a post.  

In our great country, voting is a “right” of birth and the completion of a few forms.  In a generation when we, as United States citizens, have become numbed by our own entitlement to speak and be heard, my vote still counts.  It counts because it can impose a term limit that dictators around this world dread and war against.  It counts because it celebrates a “right” that many of the poorest, sickest, most uneducated and displaced citizens in this world would consider a “privilege.”

I’m marking my calendar for Friday, November 14th.  I’m calling the number.  I’m going to find out if my ballot was accepted.  Because my vote is my privilege.  And, it counts.

“Unspeakable”

Cultural Context: The word used by Peter Geren, secretary of the U.S. Army to describe the sights seen by Private James Hoyt on April 11, 1945 when he was one of four American soldiers to discover the Buchenwald German concentration camp.  Mr. Hoyt died on Monday, August 11 and was the last surviving member of the four man team.

“Unspeakable” was right, for the CNN news account/tribute to Mr. Hoyt’s heroism indicated that he had kept his involvement in the liberation secret from many he knew for much of his life.  The story indicates that Mr. Hoyt still suffered nightmares and attended post-traumatic stress disorder support meetings for veterans 63 years after his experience.  Mr. Hoyt had begun to share his memories with author Stephen Bloom.

From the article:

“It’s important that we don’t allow ourselves to lose him,” Geren told CNN by phone. “It’s the memory of heroes like James Hoyt and the memories of what they’ve done that we must ensure that we keep alive and share with the current generation and future generations.”

Captain Fredrick Keffer, commander of the small mission to locate Buchenwald later wrote:

“Memories of evil get erased, for life must go on, and new generations cannot be locked in the past. But they would do well to remember the past.”

It was interesting to me that when army files about the liberation were located, Mr. Hoyt, who was a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and the recipient of the Bronze Star, had been asked to account for his greatest achievement.  He listed his accomplishment as the 1939 Johnson County Iowa Spelling Bee champion.  The word he spelled to win, ironically was “archive.”  As his story, his sights are now archived, I’m confronted by our need to speak the unspeakable.

We don’t want to.  We want to “lose” the memories, to push them away, to look away from ourselves and the realities of who humans are.  But, history shows us–today’s media shows us–that there is no depth to the unspeakable that man can and will perpetrate on man.  God tells us through the prophet Jeremiah that the human heart is “more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (jeremiah 17:9)

I have always been fascinated by history and mystified by the surreal circumstances of the Jewish Holocaust of World War II.  The accounts are overwhelming in their depravity.  But, they are not unlike countless other situations in the history of our world.  And, it is not easy to point a finger and single out perpetrators over there somewhere in the great category of “someone else”–not when you see the seemingly endless reports of bizarre and cruel crimes that grace the rotating “featured stories” of today’s news.  For all the writing and teaching on our race’s “evolution” toward the best of ourselves, we remain depraved.  And, if “evolution” is man’s way, a chance betterment of our species, then we are doomed to depravity.  For, survival of the fittest inevitably means the destruction of the weaker.  Even the rules of the theory of evolution don’t allow for the possibility that our deceitful and sick hearts can be made truthful, healed, compassionate toward one another.

Beyond the hopelessness of our own evolution, there is a cosmic intervention available.  It’s not by chance.  It’s not accidental.  It’s a desire by a Creator God to take his beloved handiwork back to the communion of Eden.  It’s the new ancient reality that all is not lost, and we can change.  We can BE CHANGED.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes… so you will be My people, and I will be your God.” (ezekiel 36:26-28)

“Olympic Truce”

This Article Published at  

Cultural Context:  A tradition dating to the ancient Greek games which calls for a halt to fighting during the Olympic games, ensuring the athletes’ safe passage to and from the events.  Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek (speedskating, 2006) has called for the tradition to be revived with a cease fire in the Darfur region during this summer’s Beijing games.  He also founded an organization called Team Darfur which encourages athletes to play a part in raising awareness and bringing an end to the crisis.

On August 5, the Chinese government revoked Cheek’s previously issued visa, preventing him from attending the Olympic games in Beijing just one week before he was scheduled to arrive.  Although the government was not required to state the reasons for disallowing Cheek, it is widely believed the decision was in response to his work for peace in Darfur and his criticism of China’s lack of action in the region.  Team Darfur has expressed concerns that other athletes are being discouraged from expressing views about the issues as well.  Read the AP article here.

Sad.

In the definition of “truce” at dictionary.com, the word that stands out to me is respite–”a temporary respite, as from trouble or pain.”  A respite in the Darfur, Sudan region does not seem likely during the few weeks of the Olympics.  And, how could we expect it when we can’t even achieve a respite from the war of words and human rights ideologies surrounding these Olympic games.

According to the dictionary.com entry, one of the early origins of the word “truce” dates from the 1200s, meaning “faith, assurance of faith, covenant, treaty.”  It isn’t surprising that faith or assurance of faith is at the heart of the concept of a truce between factions.  A truce requires good faith, a certain level of trust between the parties involved.  It also requires a covenant, which somehow is so much more than a mere promise.  More than an agreement, it is a commitment to the same goal between those parties.

The Olympic “spirit” is the supposed shared goal in the practice of an Olympic truce.  In fact, many of the articles about the Joey Cheek situation tout the spirit of the Olympic games.  The spirit is a common goal that all athletes are on equal footing regardless of race, creed, gender, or political ideology.  The spirit is that anyone can win.  The only great placesetter is ability and performance.  And, although the modern Olympic games may be littered with corporate sponsorship, the spirit is still pride of nationality, pride of team, and pride of personal accomplishment.  You see it in the faces during the opening ceremony parade of nations from the national delegations of hundreds of competitors, many “favored” to win, to the lone flag-bearer proudly representing a new nation, his country’s greatest hero.  “I belong here.  This is where I come from.  This is what I can do.”

Although I see the need for the world, China, myself to be made aware of Darfur, the need for the world, China, myself to be prompted to facilitate change in Darfur, still I fear it is the United States that has first violated an Olympic truce.  We have been the first to take up arms.  For all his worthy work on behalf of the region in crisis, I fear it is Joey Cheek who has wrongly interjected political ideology into the Olympic games.  With our uniquely American way of insisting on freedom of speech at all costs, those around our team have actually violated the covenant of the Olympic spirit.  We have broken an assurance of faith that these games should not be about politics.  

The U.S. team delegation made a powerful statement about the Olympic spirit on August 5, the same day Joey Cheek’s visa was denied.  They chose Lopez Lamong as their flag-bearer for the Opening Ceremonies.  Lamong is a first-time Olympian with no gold medals under his belt.  He will compete in only one event, the 1500-meter race.  He is also a Darfur refugee and a new American citizen.  (Read his story at ESPN here and great commentary at LA Times here.)  The team chose him the American way.  They voted for him.  As he walks the parade of nations carrying the stars and stripes, he will raise more awareness about the Sudanese crisis than possibly Joey Cheek ever could at these games–all without saying a word.

The Olympic games should not be about human rights policy, for they are inevitably about human rights in actuality.  There is no greater way for the Olympics to highlight human rights than to allow the spirit of the games to flourish unshadowed by American-indulged free speech.  As each athlete stands equal on the starting block, evaluated only by his qualifying time, the world is watching.  And listening.  “I am a human being.  I am an athlete.  This is where I come from.  This is what I can do.  I belong here.”

“Black Hole”

Cultural Context:  An apparently racially offensive reference made by a white Dallas, Texas County Commissioner during a Commissioners meeting this week.  In a discussion about traffic tickets, Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield referred to the County Collections office as a “black hole.”  Two black Commissioners demanded an apology, claiming the statement was racist in nature.  In statements after the meeting,  Commissioner John Wiley Price also indicated that terms like “devil’s food cake” (a recipe traditionally made of chocolate) and “black sheep of the family” were also racist in nature.  Read the FoxNews article.

Huh?

Is every use of the word “black” in our language now a racist statement?  Is every reference to something dark now a racist statement?  Is every reference to chocolate?  Every reference to the “devil?”  I’m concerned.  The answers to these questions will determine whether I’ve been offending people willy-nilly my whole life, because those words have been incorporated into my vocabulary since I was a preschooler.  What about the terms “little white lie,” “white noise,” or “white-collar crime?”  Should I be offended by society in general, the technology sector and the judicial sector respectively?

Two observations:

• This ridiculous discourse has now been given national credence in that it appears in today’s news on Politics at FoxNews.com.  No doubt I’ll hear someone discussing it ad nauseam as I surf the channels tonight.  I saw the story when it rotated into one of the top news spots on the home page — you know, the ones with the giant headlines.  It was right above a sublink to the story about Atlanta retiring its “Men Working” construction signs in favor of the more politically correct “Persons At Work.”  Commissioner Price now has his 15 minutes.
   
• In writing my description above, I realized that to portray it accurately I had to list the parties as black or white.  This story is only pseudo-significant if the race of each Commissioner is made clear.  I thought the whole purpose of seeking racial equality and reform was that a person wouldn’t need to be defined primarily by his race.  Talk about a step backwards.

For the record:
Wikipedia tells me:  ”A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon.  The term “Black Hole” comes from the fact that, at a certain point, even electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light) is unable to break away from the attraction of these massive objects. This renders the hole’s interior invisible or, rather, black like the appearance of space itself.”

Wikipedia also tells me that the term black sheep: “originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a herd of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black sheep were considered commercially undesirable because their wool cannot be dyed as white wool can.”

Devil’s Food Cake:  I’m not even going to go there, except to say that if you are resisting your sweet tooth, chocolate would certainly be classified as sinful.

With due respect to Commissioner Price, we both live in the American South where racism has been a huge issue and a very real experience for many since way before I was born.  In fact, my home state of Mississippi has been the poster child for racism since well before the Civil Rights Movement began.  We (both black and white citizens) continue to struggle to overcome its effects and its stigma in seeking a place of relevance in society in 2008.  In all honesty, MANY disparities still exist between the educational, economic, health and social opportunites available for blacks versus whites.  These are real life battles for our future that are still being fought, and we must win them.  We don’t have time or energy for the ignorant, hypersensitive and publicity-hungry battles over semantics to which this situation shifts the focus.  It’s shameful, and it’s holding us back.

A New Birth of Freedom

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

 ~ Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Gettysburg, PA

Ironically, President Lincoln was not actually the featured speaker at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg.  He was only asked to attend the ceremony seventeen days before the event.  He followed a more than 2 hour oration by Edward Everett with this 2 minute speech that is now recognized as one of the most powerful in American history.

The battle of Gettysburg ended on July 3, 1863 (144 years ago today) with the blood-soaked ground holding more than 7,500 Union and Confederate soldiers who gave the “full measure of devotion” for their respective understandings of freedom. At least 4,700 of those were Confederate soldiers who fought, in part, for the “right” to hold other human beings as possessions.

Some say that Americans have no right to speak to the world on human rights, given some of the atrocities in our own history.  I say, who better to tell the tale of each human’s value than those who have walked through the consequences of our own devaluing?  We can not change the past, but we can not live in it either.  Our voices can not be bound by it.  We can acknowledge it, take responsibility for it, learn from it, and move forward from it.  And, we must share the consequences of it.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work…”

Interesting Articles from “Thinkers”

I recently joined a posting group on BlogCatalog called My Life Thinking.  It offers posts from all kinds of different perspectives.  Check out this post on the moderator’s blog with links to some of the current favorites.  I posted my Human Writes article to the discussion.

Also, check out the moderator’s post on the “Gaza Holocaust” and the website link.  I need to look and think through the site a little.  I’m not very familiar with the Palestinian perspective. But, it’s powerful, and I know God is grieved by this situation.
Disclaimer:  The Gaza site has some very disturbing images.  Squeamish beware.

Human Writes.

115 pages. That was the sum of Elie Wiesel’s Night, an account of the Nobel Laureate’s imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps.  I believe it was toward the end of page 7 that I got up from my chair, walked to my bedroom, and put the book behind several others in a basket under my bedside table.  I actually consciously thought, “I’ll just pretend I don’t have the book.”  I even thought of hiding it under the bed.

Page 7 was Mr. Wiesel’s account of how Moishe the Beadle (his Kabbalist tutor) miraculously survived his stay at an early Polish Gestapo work camp.  He returned to the village warning whoever would listen of the experiences in store for the Jews in hopes they could “ready” themselves while there was still time.  No one wanted to listen.  The poignant regret of that fact made me want to close the book, for it was inevitable foreshadowing of the rest of the story.

I know.  It was a strange reaction, but the memoir from the first sentence was so powerful, almost devastating, to me that I wanted to throw it away without reading any more.  But, I didn’t have the nerve.  Somehow I felt that I owed it to Mr. Wiesel to read his words.  If he had survived the horror described in that book and been bold enough to record it, how could I possibly NOT show him at least the courtesy of reading it, acknowledging it?

It was the first time I had read a personal account of a Holocaust survivor.  I think that is the reason why this book came to mind when I was contemplating an article on Human Rights.  I came across an initiative from Bloggers Unite encouraging writers to blog about Human Rights on May 15 as a way of bringing more awareness to the issues.

As I thought about my own perspective on human rights, it seemed that Human Writes was a more appropriate term.  You see, a major barrier to our engagement in these issues is that the statistics on the grossest forms of human rights violations are simply numbing.  Large numbers become impersonal and lose their meaning.  But, when one human writes of his own experiences, how can we dare to look away without asking questions? How do we summon that kind of boldness?

In Elie Wiesel’s speech accepting the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize (38 years to the day, ironically, after the United Nations adopted its Declaration of Human Rights), he said, “…I have tried to keep memory alive, I have tried to fight those who would forget.  Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.”

As I open the burden of Night again, I see that Mr. Wiesel does not share OUR luxury of forgetting.  For he writes of his first night at Birkenau:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.

Never.

The issue of human rights brings a new dimension to “paying attention,” the pursuit of this website.  It requires a harsh confrontation with the raw, cruel capabilities of human beings; the realization that the events of Elie Wiesel’s Night did not happen in the 12th century, but less than 70 years ago – one lifespan.  Yet, similar cruelties are occuring all over the world even as I write.  And if I am honest, I admit that the seeds of those mind-boggling statistics occur even in my own little hometown every day. Each time someone (even I) with words or looks or actions seeks to diminish the infinite worth of another human being created in God’s image, we have contributed to the cruelty, as if acknowledging the worth of another somehow diminishes my own.

Elie Wiesel once asked Moeshe the Beadle,  “why do you pray?”  The answer – “I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.”

I pray for that same strength – to ask God the hard questions, to ask myself the hard questions, and to have the courage to face the answers.