Vex Populi

 

It's almost over. Nothing left to do now but cast your ballot...

...and await the results.

Democracy in America, 2024

Vital Viewing (That's Enfranchisement Edition)

 

For those of you who live in Ohio, the deadline to register to vote in the 2024 elections is October 7, this coming Monday. Above are all the things you need to know and do and be in order to register. However, it may not be all that easy to read as at some point the words shrink quite a bit (just what you need in an election where there's bound to be accusations of fraud and voter suppression: small print.) So as a further service I've included the following video provided by the good people at the Cuyahoga County Board of Election themselves in the hope of making things a bit more clear:

Get all that? Good. Now just to make sure you do everything you're supposed to do to fully participate in our democracy, I'd like to add a cautionary tale of what could happen if you DON'T do everything you're supposed to do.

Actually, this cautionary tale takes place in the Queens, New York of the 1970s but I think it applies equally well to Cuyahoga County, Ohio of the 2020s as a man of many, many opinions suddenly finds himself unable to act upon a single one of those opinions. Watch:

Don't end up like Archibald. Register!

 

The People's Choice

 

Good news for anyone who believes women--and, really, at the end of the day, everybody--should have autonomy over their own bodies. Ohio voters have approved Issue 1, which will enshrine in the state constitution “an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.”

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing--and this state's still got it.

21st Century Suffrage

 Fifteen years ago actress Masiela Lusha, best known for playing George Lopez's rebellious teenage daughter Carmen on that eponymous sitcom of his, got to vote in her first presidential election, which according to the Parade Sunday supplement, she looked forward to with excitement. I don't blame her. I was excited about voting in my first presidential election--until my candidate lost. It wasn't until my fourth presidential election that I finally picked a winner, so, to all you eighteen-year-olds out there just now getting the right to vote, remember, democracy requires a certain amount of patience. Sometimes a lot of patience. What about Masiela? Did her election year-excitement pay off? And has it continued to pay off in the decade and a half that she's been allowed to vote? I can't tell you. In an effort to pad this blog entry, I did try to find out by googling "Masiela Lusha" and "voting record" and was only 50% successful. I found out everything about Masiela except for her voting record. For instance, even though she played a Hispanic on TV, Masiela is originally from Albania. She lived there until she was about five, when, probably for something having to do with the fall of communism that was going on at the time, she and her family left the country as refugees. Two years later, after stops in Hungary and Austria, they ended up in the United States. In each of these countries, Masiela had to learn a new language, and if you do your math right, you'll find that English is her fourth language, though she speaks it with no trace of an accent (it's good to start young.) She eventually became a U.S. citizen, with all the promise that entails, including Life, Liberty, and a recurring role in the Sharnado movies. OK, a bit of snark slipped in there and I apologize for that. To make up for it I'll point out that, in addition to acting, Masiela has written five books of poetry, two children books, and a novel. In addition, she's been an ambassador for a charity founded by Prince Harry, a spokesperson for Scholastic's Read for Life, a spokesperson for the hunger relief program, Great American Bake Sale, was Ambassador for Youth for the nonprofit Athgo International, and even founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit of her own, the Children of the World Foundation, all of which looks pretty good on a resume (and further helps when padding a blog entry.) But, getting back to Masiela's right to vote, it still doesn't tell me who she likes among the many presidential candidates running around lately. The election is still a year away, and she may not even know herself at this point, and that's all right. But if I was a refugee from Albania, a refugee from anywhere, even a refugee from some rose-colored spectacled American past, I know who I'd be voting against.

 


 
 

Quips and Quotations (Election Day Edition)

 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--Declaration of Independence.

 We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

--Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Convention

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
and whatever is done or said returns at last to me…
I speak the pass-word primeval--I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms…

--Walt Whitman

I believe the only way to protect my own rights is to protect the rights of others.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

 It takes no compromise to give people their rights...it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.

--Harvey Milk

 O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME

--Langston Hughes

A republic, if you can keep it.

--Benjamin Franklin, when asked just what kind of government had come out of that Constitutional Convention. 


Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

--Thomas Paine

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

--Abraham Lincoln