“Why I am voting for Barack Obama Today”

I dedicate this blog entry to my “Nana”, Louise Helen Smith Mason known as “Ma Mason”, my mother’s mother who, after being “GIVEN” voting rights in 1965, when I was nine years old, took me to the old Emerson School  Auditorium (EVERY year until she died), one block from my house on Hillcrest Avenue in Plainfield, New Jersey, where she went to vote.  The excitement I felt when she let me close the curtain to the voting booth, and let me pull the levers for the people she wanted in office was something I felt was important, even as a kid.  When she told me to pull the lever to open the curtain, I KNEW I had done something important.

In 2008, when I went into the voting booth, I had pictures of my Nana, my mother and my father with me, and as I voted for the first African-American president of the United States, I had to take a minute because the tears were just too much.

I cannot talk about Mitt Romney today, because today, my blog is about the right of my people to vote.  Everyone knows what he’s about.

I will vote for Barack Obama today, not because he is African-American, nor because I am African-American, but because he is a man of integrity, because I believe he cares about EVERY person in this country, because of what he has accomplished in the last four years, and because he is a good, decent and honest human being.