By Jasmine Neosh (Menominee), University of Michigan law student, College of Menominee Nation alumna, and American Indian College Fund student ambassador
As someone who has helped to organize many voting initiatives in Indian Country, I have been faced with a lot of questions. Most of the time, the answers are easy: your polling place is here, here is the transportation schedule if you can’t get a ride, the hours are here, here is what will be on your ballot. But there’s one question that always takes much longer than the others even though it’s the shortest question of them all:
Why?
Why should I vote if I am not sure it will make the changes that I want to see? Why should I vote if it seems that my voice is not represented?
These are valid questions. The truth is, we have been told by countless politicians that voting for them is the gateway to the world that we deserve. We sign on to campaigns that promise change, only to find a few years later that things often look the same.
The truth is that change does not really come through electoral politics. That has always been the case. Instead, change comes from dedicated people whose names we often do not know working tirelessly in their communities to make them safer, cleaner and healthier. We can and should support those people in this work. And one of the ways that we do that is by making sure that their path to the world that we want is as free of obstacles as we can manage.
What we are voting for in these elections is not change. Instead, we go into the voting booth knowing that the change will come in the form of an organizer knocking on the doors of power. Where we come in, as the voting public, is choosing who will be on the other side of that door and what will be waiting for them when they enter.
Will it be open ears? Perhaps even an open heart? Will it be someone who cannot imagine what our experiences are like but who is at least willing to try? Someone who can’t necessarily speak our language but is willing to hire people who do? Or will it be someone who does everything in their power to keep us out?
That is what we are voting for: the best possible chance that the next time our communities need clean water, or our clinics need funding, or we just need to be heard, there will be someone on the other side of that door that might be willing to listen. Because that is how we get the world that we want.
