In the midst of all my Bush-hating, and worry about this election (and I know many other Canadians who are literally giving themselves ulcers over this–I can’t imagine how progressives in the US have any stomach left at all) it’s nice to get some good news.
This is from a report (yanked from an email sent in to Josh at Talking Points Memo) from a grass-rooters worker in Florida:
The best of all was an 80 year old African American man who said to me: “When I first started I wasn’t even allowed to vote. Then, when I did, they was trying to intimidate me. But now I see all these folks here to make sure that my vote counts. This is the first time in my life that I feel like when I cast my vote it’s actually gonna be heard.”
To see people coming out — elderly, disabled, blind, poor; people who have to hitch rides, take buses, etc — and then staying in line for hours and hours and hours… Well, it’s humbling. And it’s awesome. And it’s kind of beautiful.
Sometimes you forget what America is.
(Trish and I are thinking of our friends in Florida, by the way, who are planning to move to Canada. The upside of the length and painful process is that they will be able to vote against Bush.)
