According to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections, only 15 percent of the 131,000 registered voters in the city of Orlando took time to vote yesterday. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer was ushered back into office as well as Orlando City Commissioners Tony Ortiz, Patty Sheehan, Sam Ings, and newly elected Commissioner Jim Gray.
But the candidates and the results represent only a fraction of what occurred Tuesday evening in Orlando. Nearly 85 percent of Orlando residents decided to stay home and watch the results rather than participate and that is a huge problem for our democracy.
Our nation is one built upon a foundation of freedom and choice, something we cherish and fight for on a daily basis. We yell and scream about the injustices we experience and how we need to work to right those wrongs. We participate in marches and rallies for a sense of participation, sign petitions and will occasionally contact a politician about our frustrations.
Yet when we have the opportunity to properly take steps to aid in the correction of that wrong, we sit on the sidelines.
For those that have become willing participants in the fight for justice for Trayvon Martin and failed to exercise your right to democracy, shame on you. If you are included in that 85 percent of people who thought it was in your best interest to avoid polling locations on Tuesday, shame on you.
If we are to truly believe in change and work toward reconciliation, then taking a trip to cast a vote for mayor or city commissioner is about as easy and basic as it can get.
For every person who dons a hoddie, purchases a pack of skittles, or drinks a can of iced tea in memory of young Trayvon Martin, your fight starts at the ballot box, not within the aisles of the convenience store.
The next time we fail to vote and decide to shriek about an injustice, remember this moment. Remember the 85 percent of those who failed to vote. Remember that the representation we elect may birth inequality, but changing that system of disparity starts with you and your vote.
Until we understand our worth, we will continue to fight the same battles.
-JH
Jason, you are spot on with this one. I agree 100%. We can’t be upset when our rights are violated when we don’t even care enough to exert our right to vote. If you don’t vote, don’t complain, and take off that damn hoodie!
Keep on your Hoodie and wash down those Skittles with a splash of Ice Tea. The election for mayor and city council is one thing, but killing our child is another. Don’t get the two mixed up. Yes we should get out and vote in the primaries and general elections, but we have to take care of our home also.
When the elected officials allow a fence to put up down the middle of the street to block our businesses out, we need to put on a hoodie. When the elected officials take our tax money and build monuments and stadiums for themselves, we need to put on a hoodie. When the elected officials zone our communities so that our kids have to be bused twenty miles to school, we need to put on a hoodie. We need to respect the hoodie and use it’s symbolism to get done what the elections are not doing.
Tevra you are spot on. That hoodie doesn’t buy freedom.
Lawrence we will agree to disagree. I agree to a point, although a very slight one, about the symbolism of the hoodie. But if there is no substance behind the hoodie and the skittles and the tea, then what is the point in the symbolism?
Okay Jason, you can agree to disagree, but you missed the point. If you don’t see the symbolism of the hundreds of thousands of people all over the country wearing hoodies, then you are not of this planet. That symbolism has substance and if we are smart, we would use the symbolism of the hoodie in our struggle for freedom and fairness. Just like the symbolism of tying a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree, symbolized being welcomed back home from war. Just like the pink ribbon symbolized the fight to beat cancer. The hoodie is our scream of freedom from oppression. Get it, rally around it, use it. It has become a point of strength for us.
Lawrence I receive your point, but disagree with it. To your example of the ribbon, how many vets do we have to return home from war every year only to come back to homelessness and a lack of jobs? There is no strength behind it if there is no substance behind it. We can scream and yell and march and rally all we want, but if there is no action behind the march and rally there is no point.
I want us to scream for freedom and fight oppression, I’m 100% behind that. But what happens when the screaming stops?
Jason, then don’t stop screaming until you get your freedom. The hoodie could be the symbol the does the screaming for you. You assume certain thing about people who wear the cross symbol. You assume certain things about people who wear the KKK hoods. You assume certain things about people when you notice the symbol that they portray, even before you say a single word. The hoodie has become a symbol. We can use it to speak for us before we say a word.