We Stood in Those Lines

Vote suppressors, you underestimated us.

You devoted endless hours, days and weeks working to keep us from voting.  You spent millions of dollars pushing and defending voter ID laws, early voting restrictions, and registration hurdles designed to discourage us from exercising our franchise.  You spewed innumerable words trying to convince the gullible that voter suppression was really “ballot protection.”  Some of you even slipped up and admitted what everyone already knew – that you were trying to ensure President Obama’s defeat.

And while you were making all that noise, we were quietly watching and listening and preparing.

Maybe you thought we were stupid.  Maybe you thought we were weak.  Or perhaps you totally misread some of our disappointment with the slowness of the progress President Obama is making on the issues we care about and figured that to mean our support for him had ebbed.  That’s understandable – given how little you know about or care about or have tried to learn about (much less reach out to) us, why would you know any better?

It’s not surprising that you jumped to the wrong conclusions – after all, we haven’t been as loudly ebullient in our support for President Obama as we were in 2008.  But there’s a reason for that – and not the one you assumed.  As he himself has said, Barack Obama is no longer just a candidate.  He’s the President.  This was not just a campaign for us.  It was much more serious than that.  It was a mission, a cause.  We meant business.

We’ve seen what you have tried to do to this man.  We’ve seen and felt the disrespect and disdain you show him.  We’ve seen how you have endeavored to smear, demean, undermine and otherize him.  And we’ve seen how you have pulled out all of the stops to try to keep us from voting for him.

Yes, vote suppressors, you misjudged us.  You seemed to think we couldn’t see and hear you as you ham-handedly went about your nasty business, using all of the levers and mechanisms of power that voters so stupidly turned over to you in 2010 when trying to teach our President a lesson.  You didn’t seem to realize that we had gone from “Yes, we CAN!” to “Oh, no, you DIDN’T!” to “Yes, We WILL!”

But just because you don’t look at or listen to us does not mean we can’t see and hear you – and we’ve been watching and hearing and feeling everything you were saying and doing.  And while you weren’t paying attention to us, we got ready for you.

And then we lined up and stood in line – those lines that you thought would deter us but that, in reality, emboldened us.

We stood in those lines in the chill of the northern nights and in the warmth of the Florida sun.  We stood in those lines that snaked around buildings and crawled up the block.  We stood in those lines and rolled our eyes at the Tea Party activists who believed we were ignorant enough to be influenced by their glossy “Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were Republican” fliers.

We stood in these lines to show you that we will not let you snatch away our vote. We stood in these lines to show the world that we will not let you run our President out of office with your ugly lies, racist language and sophisticated, modern-day Jim Crow tactics.  We stood in these lines, calmly resolved to show him we have his back because he has ours.

Vote suppressors, you blew it.  You spent all that money, wasted all that time, and told all those lies for naught.  President Barack Obama was reelected decisively because millions of black and brown and white and yellow and red Americans stood in those lines and, with peaceful determination, let out a roar that will forever echo through history:  “Yes, we can . . . yes, we will . . . yes, we DID!”