[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]
I don’t want to vote. Every time I see that lavender absentee ballot envelope peeking from under the sheaves of paper on my desk, I cringe.
I have voted in every election since I was eligible in 1990. School Board elections, I’m there. Library Board replacement needed, I skipped lunch at my summer job and stood in line to vote. Anyone can bow to peer pressure and vote in a general election. Special elections were my specialty.
I take voting very seriously. So seriously that if my dear husband skipped an election, I’d consider divorce. No, really. I can’t imagine having someone living in my house who didn’t see their right to vote as an acknowledgement of the many who fought and died for that right.
When my family escaped Mississippi under cover of darkness to emerge into the gray light of upstate New York, the first thing every eligible voter in my family did was register to vote.
Don’t Stand in My Way
No longer fearful of poll taxes and lynching, they could exercise their Constitutional (amended) right. And vote they did. My grandmother is always the first person to vote in her Brooklyn precinct. My earliest childhood memories include time spent behind the blue polyester curtain of the New York City voting booth, watching my mother flipping down the levers and pulling the huge lever that recorded your vote and opened the curtain in one fell swoop – as if by magic. When I was a kid, Election Day was a holiday where civic duty prevailed.
March 3 seems like anything but a holiday. The ebullience from November hasn’t bubbled over into spring. Civic participation feels more like a chore than a participation in democracy. My ballot arrived weeks ago. Time is running out. But I don’t want to play term limit hopscotch.
My City Council member, Jack Weiss, is running for City Attorney. Somehow, I’m supposed to forget the anger and ire that sparked his unsuccessful recall effort. In my house, he’s known as Zero Traffic Impact Weiss. Every time I’m stuck in traffic, undoubtedly in front of yet another new apartment building or condo conversion, I curse his name.
And there’s Paul Koretz. He used to be our neighborhood’s state Assembly representative, before he was termed out. Can anyone think of anything noteworthy or interesting he did there – besides standing by while California’s budgeting hit the skids? Time’s up. I’ll take that as a no. Then he ran and lost his bid for the West Basin Water Board. Where do politicians find these obscure posts? Now he wants to be our City Council member.
Greuel Says: And for My Next Act
Lastly, let’s not forget Wendy Greuel. Soon to be termed out, this Valley City Council member wants your vote for City Controller. I’ll admit her staff is great at answering the phone and coming out for any and all manner of meetings. But do you really think she has the Laura Chick ability to ferret out government waste?
Public service has become a euphemism for public dole.
Don’t get me started on our illustrious Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for whom governing is riding in a gas-guzzling SUV or greenhouse gas-emitting airplane, from one photo opportunity to the next. His term as Mayor has consisted of fundraising from folks whose interests are not the same as most Angelenos in an attempt to sew up his re-election so that he has a platform for his next gig. Oh, and cheating on his wife in the interim.
Even the endorsements by the Los Angeles Times are lackluster. When a newspaper’s Editorial Board can’t muster up enthusiasm for candidates for elected office, we’re in sad state of affairs. I’ll admit that it’s hard to get excited about candidates who go from one job to the next when no real change happens, no matter what job they’re in.
Instead of politicians who work at their job-of-the-moment, voters are inundated with ballot measures to make the most mundane of decisions. After the Prop. 8 debacle last November, I now have serious doubts about direct democracy.
Surrounded by Malaise
Measure B appears to be the latest solar power boondoggle. The mystical “subway to the sea,” and government funding of stem cell research not being enough for one decade.
Apathy and malaise, however, will not win out over my strong will to vote. I refuse to allow my vote (or lack thereof) to be taken for granted. Whatever the issues of our “community,” civic participation, historically, has not been one of them.
Back in the old days, when I was a criminal defense attorney, I was sitting at the counsel table as my client and I started jury selection. My young defendant, looking at the printout of the mostly white, mostly suburban, jury panel asked me how jurors were chosen. I told him one method was to get people from the voter rolls. He proudly announced he wasn’t registered to vote, because he understood the Bible prohibited people from sitting in judgment of others. The irony of the situation was lost on him.
I will vote because I can’t let other voters make these decisions for me.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, "Law School Supports Drug Use"—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course.This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com.
