by Emily Rose Herzlin
– USA –
“I’m voting because I care about the future of this country. It’s my right as a U.S. citizen [to vote] and it’d be shameful not to; it’d be like a slight to the founding fathers and women like Susan B. Anthony who all believed in the right to vote. If the next four years are terrible and I don’t vote, I have no right to complain as I made no attempt to have it be otherwise.” – Nicole Long, 21
“I’m from a swing state. It’s necessary for me to be heard and have my vote counted.” – Dorie Kurtz, 22
“I already have my absentee ballot in hand. This is the first major election year that I can vote, so I’m taking full advantage of that.” – Allison Ahlgrim, 20
“Yes I’m voting – My mom would remove me from the family if I didn’t.” – Lily Mundy, 21
“Did you check the mail today?” my roommate asked me last week. “I’m expecting my absentee ballot. Keep a look-out for it.” A few days later it arrived. I placed it on her side of our tiny excuse for a kitchen table. She grabbed a pen, filled it out emphatically and proclaimed, “Okay! I’ve voted! Now all I need is to buy some stamps…”
I chuckled at her almost childlike excitement at filling out this piece of paper in our shoebox Manhattan apartment, secretly jealous that I had to wait another three weeks to vote. Even more jealous, still, that I didn’t apply for a change of address in time, so I will have to take the LIRR out to my hometown where I was registered to vote. I did the same thing for the primary election; even though it’s an inconvenience, I enjoy the slightly subversive feeling I get from carrying my politics with me all the way back to Long Island. I hope that the conservative ladies who check me in to vote at the Recreation Center can read the words I’m voting for Obama – deal with it from the mischievous glint in my eyes.
“I believe that if it was her choice, she would cause our country to regress to the 1950s and overrule Roe vs. Wade and I would say (even though this may be stretching a bit far) that she would cause us to regress so far to end women’s suffrage. Her ideas are antiquated and outdated….She is an embarrassment who would further our ruined image to the world.” – Alexandra Comito, 21
“The moose is not the national animal. Joe Six-Pack could be a borderline alcoholic without mental health care. If she can’t instill her political and moral beliefs on her own family, how can she do that for an entire country?” – Ashley Leeds, 24
“The fact that Palin is one 72 year old’s heartbeat away from the presidency is irrelevant. It would be just as incomprehensible were she one 35 year old’s heartbeat away. She should never have been considered for the office to which she aspires, and I shudder to think what will happen if she gets there.” – Nicole Long, 21
“Sarah Palin? A clever move to get previously-Clinton voters to pick McCain. Clever, except that it was too obvious what McCain was doing, so I guess not clever at all.” – Anonymous, 21
The Harvard Square stop on the Boston T was blooming with students and families last weekend. A friend and I walked up and down the clean, winding streets lined with cute novelty shops, and I couldn’t have felt farther removed from New York unless I were in a foreign country. Boston is strange like that – it feels more like Europe than America. A t-shirt vendor on the street sells shirts with the slogan, “McCain/Palin: When Pigs Fly.” Now I feel more at home.
My friend and I wandered into a costume store where a couple of college frat boys were trying on dresses and skirts for Halloween. I was about to roll my eyes when I heard their conversation:
“Dude, I want to be something really scary for Halloween. I thought I’d be Sarah Palin but Rob already stole that idea.”
Men and women alike – at least most of those who I’ve encountered – think that Sarah Palin is one of the most embarrassing things to come out of this election. The day McCain announced his VP pick, I was at work waiting for the weekly staff meeting to start. My boss leaned over the table and said quietly, “Did you hear who McCain’s VP is? It’s a woman.” Our jaws collectively dropped.
“Who is she?”
“No idea. Sarah something.”
Weeks later, she’s not just “Sarah Something.” She’s a walking insult. Liberals can’t decide whether she’s a reason to celebrate (for the downfall of McCain’s campaign) or to tremble in fear (because the thinly veiled reason for her selection has possibly fooled more than half the country). I’m not just insulted. My curvy body is insulted. My two X chromosomes are insulted. Everything that makes me a woman is insulted.
“Before Sarah Palin, I understood that people would like and vote for John McCain. He is a moderate conservative and doesn’t seem overly imposing on social issues. Although I disagree with his economic policies, I know that there are multiple schools of thought on the issue, and people are entitled to support whatever they choose. However, the addition of Sarah Palin just pushed it over the edge.” – Nicole Long, 21
“I want to vote because it has been something I’ve been waiting for and if my vote can make a difference, that’s all I care about.” – Alexandra Comito, 21
“A lot about this election scares me, mainly the fact that I agree with some of Obama’s ideas, and some of McCain’s ideas, and that I will have to vote for who I think will do less damage.” – Anonymous, 21
“That these people may have the future of our country in their hands [is] shocking; unbelievable. I thought this was America. Everyone used to want to be here. Now they’re running the other way.” – Cat Lukaszewski, 23
It hit me the other day that this is actually the world I’m growing up in. Excuse me – grown up in. Though I do not claim to be all grown up, I must acknowledge that this is no longer my life in the making, the way I perceived it when I was in high school – this is my life. I do the job thing, I do the rent thing, I do the pay-the-bills thing – I’m sort of an adult. Oddly enough, the moment that this realization hit me wasn’t when I started going to work every day, it wasn’t when I moved out of the dorm, and it certainly wasn’t when I graduated from college; it was when Sarah Palin was nominated for VP and the overturning of Roe v. Wade became a distinct possibility. Never before did I think it could happen in my lifetime. It was one of those things that my mind never grasped onto; I took it for granted. Pro-choice was something I didn’t embody – I just was. My mom was, so I was.
I remember a conversation with a friend in the study room in the math department office at South Side High School. The abortion issue had come up earlier in our philosophy class. I heard her tell me that she was pro-life. I didn’t feel anything. That’s cool, I think I said.
Well, sixteen-year-old-Emily, when you are 21, it won’t be cool anymore, and here’s why: Flash forward to 2009, when I go to the New York Times website and the headline reads “Roe v. Wade overturned.” Women (and men) will gather together, hold each other. I imagine we will hold candles and vigils. A funeral service for our human rights will be conducted. We will scream at the sky, scream at the White House. God willing, I think to myself, since I’m careful and vigilant and always use birth control, this will never affect me. But as a woman, as an American, as a human being with a beating heart that pumps blood through my bipartisan veins, it already has affected me.
This election is probably the scariest thing to ever happen in my lifetime because it’s the first presidential election in which I’ll have a voice. A whole generation of high school students, college students, and recent graduates just had a new responsibility plopped on our shoulders, and it’s time for us to realize that the dress rehearsal is over.
On November 4th I’ll take the LIRR back to the place where I grew up to cast my first presidential vote for Barack Obama. I’ll be carrying my pocketbook, a sandwich from Penn Station, and the determined voices of my sisters born in my generation echoing in my ears.
Photo by flickr user BohPhoto used under Creative Commons licenses. – Ed.
About the Author
Emily Herzlin is a writer living in New York City. She graduated from New York University with a degree in Dramatic Literature and Creative Writing and has been published in Sentient City Magazine and writes weekly for the One City Blog. She is also a playwright, winner of the Young Playwrights Inc. National Playwrighting Competition for her one-act play “Assemblage.” Her writing is influenced by art, artists, psychology and spirituality. Emily has run drama and arts workshops in schools in NYC and Long Island, and is currently working as a teacher for autistic children.
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