{"id":617,"date":"2008-11-05T10:27:29","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T17:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/2008\/11\/05\/i-didnt-vote-for-obama-today\/"},"modified":"2008-11-05T10:32:41","modified_gmt":"2008-11-05T17:32:41","slug":"i-didnt-vote-for-obama-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/05\/i-didnt-vote-for-obama-today\/","title":{"rendered":"I Didn’t Vote For Obama Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by eastside93<\/a><\/p>\n

I have a confession to make.<\/p>\n

I did not vote for Barack Obama today.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve openly supported Obama since March.\u00a0 But I didn’t vote for him today.<\/p>\n

I wanted to vote for Ronald Woods.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0He was my algebra teacher at Clark Junior High in East St. Louis, IL.\u00a0 He died 15 years ago when his truck skidded head-first into a utility pole.\u00a0 He spent many a day teaching us many things besides the Pythagorean Theorem.\u00a0 He taught us about Medgar Evers, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis and many other civil rights figures who get lost in the shadow cast by Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t vote for Mr. Woods.<\/p>\n

I wanted to vote for Willie Mae Cross.<\/strong>\u00a0 She owned and operated Crossroads Preparatory Academy for almost 30 years, educating and empowering thousands of kids before her death in 2003.\u00a0 I was her first student.\u00a0 She gave me my first job, teaching chess and math concepts to kids in grades K-4 in her summer program.\u00a0 She was always there for advice, cheer and consolation.\u00a0 Ms. Cross, in her own way, taught me more about walking in faith than anyone else I ever knew.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t vote for Ms. Cross.<\/p>\n

I wanted to vote for Arthur Mells Jackson, Sr. and Jr.<\/strong>\u00a0 Jackson Senior was\u00a0a Latin professor.\u00a0 He has a gifted school named\u00a0for him in my hometown.\u00a0 Jackson Junior was the pre-eminent physician in my hometown for over 30 years.\u00a0 He has a heliport named\u00a0for him at a\u00a0hospital in my hometown.\u00a0 They were my great-grandfather and great-uncle, respectively.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t vote for Prof. Jackson or Dr. Jackson.<\/p>\n

I wanted to vote for A.B. Palmer.<\/strong>\u00a0 She was a leading civil rights figure in Shreveport, Louisiana, where my mother grew up and where I still have dozens of family members.\u00a0 She was a strong-willed woman who earned the\u00a0grudging respect of\u00a0the town’s leaders because she never, ever backed down from anyone and always gave better than she got.\u00a0 She lived to the ripe old age of 99, and has\u00a0a community center named for her in Shreveport.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t vote for Mrs.\u00a0Palmer.<\/p>\n

I wanted to vote for these people, who\u00a0did not live to see a day where a Black man\u00a0would appear on their ballots on a crisp November\u00a0morning.<\/p>\n

In the end, though, I realized that I could not vote for them any more than I could vote for Obama himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So who did I vote for?<\/p>\n

No one.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn’t vote.\u00a0 Not for President, anyway.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Oh, I went to the voting booth.\u00a0 I signed, was given my stub, and was walked over to a voting machine.\u00a0\u00a0I cast votes for statewide races and a state referendum on water and sewer improvements.<\/p>\n

I stood there, and I thought about all of these people, who influenced my life so greatly.\u00a0 But I didn’t vote for who would be the 44th President of the United States.<\/p>\n

When my ballot was complete, except for the top line, I finally decided who I was going to vote for – and then decided to let him vote for me.\u00a0 I reached down, picked him up, and told him to find Obama’s name on the screen and touch it.<\/p>\n

And so it came to pass that Alexander\u00a0Reed, age 5, read the voting screen, found the right candidate, touched his name, and actually cast a vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, the vote will be recorded as mine.\u00a0 But I didn’t cast it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then again, the person who actually pressed the Obama box and the\u00a0red “vote” button was the person I was really voting for all along.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It made the months of donating, phonebanking, canvassing, door hanger distributing, sign posting, blogging, arguing and persuading so much sweeter.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So, no, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama.\u00a0 I voted for a boy who now has every reason to believe he, too, can grow up to be anything he wants…even President.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by eastside93 I have a confession to make. I did not vote for Barack Obama today. I’ve openly supported Obama since March.\u00a0 But I didn’t vote for him today. I wanted to vote for Ronald Woods.\u00a0\u00a0He was my algebra teacher at Clark Junior High in East St. Louis, IL.\u00a0 He died 15 years ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}