When All Is Said & Done
A Black Eyed Review of This Election Cycle
San Francisco Chapter of the National Council of Negro Women & the National Council of Negro Women. September 8, 1956
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation,
and that is an act of political warfare.”
Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light
You can educate people about voting.
You can work to protect the right to vote.
You can knock on doors and remind people to get out and vote.
You can post and repost and do reels and stories about the importance of exercising the right to vote.
You can nag all your people to register to vote, then pile them all up all in a car and drive them over to the polling station.
You can wave a hand of encouragement to them as they make their way into the voting booth and greet them with a “job well done” slap on the back on their way out.
But what you absolutely *cannot* do is go into the voting both and control how anyone else votes down the ballot. Each voter votes alone. We each get just one ballot. On Election Day, once we cast our votes, what happens inside voting booths will be completely out of our control. Will our democracy be left standing? Once the voting booths are closed, each of us will just have to wait and see what happens.
SNCC organizers in Greenwood at a mock election. Matt Herron. October 1, 1963
The moment is coming closer and closer, moving at a steady, clipped pace. And these next few days will be ugly and tiresome. I hope you are preparing yourself for the moment by breathing deeply and holding the tender parts of your soul up to the light. I hope you’re caring for yourself—your frazzled nerves and exhausted heart—with kid gloves.
Any political act we take, including voting, is an act of war against dehumanizing acts of power and oppression. So, as Lorde so wisely wrote, caring for ourselves is a necessary weapon, a self-love grenade launched into the fear-filled darkness.
Civil rights Protestors Marching from Selma to Montgomery. Bruce Davidson. 1965
Here are 12 Self-Indulgent (Self-Love) Questions
For You and Loved Ones’ Self-Preservation and Survival: