You’re standing up for democracy. Thank you!
Today I’m sharing a message I wrote for the 2 million+ 18-year-olds who are registered to vote for the first time. But it applies to all of us.
Thank you for everything you’ve done to help get them here.
To the 2,000,000+ 18-year-olds who are, or will be, registered to vote today:
Many of you have already voted. Many of you will vote for the first time today.
Congratulations.
When you vote, you are standing up for democracy. Even with its imperfections, the genius of democracy is that it contains within it the seeds for its own improvement.
Those seeds include your freedom to speak and to organize. They include your ability to reflect on your own experience, to understand your own values, and to work to bring them into reality.
They include public processes that are, or should be, open to all. Governing systems that, at least in theory, represent all of us.
It is our actions that give life to these processes and systems. Our actions determine, ultimately, how our systems will serve us and how they might change.
Most of you didn’t get here alone. A parent helped you register, or a teacher, or a friend who told you it mattered. Maybe you are the one who brought your friends along. There are also countless people we don’t know personally, but who are responsible for our ability to vote today. They are the ones who fought to expand the right to vote and who today stand up for elections that are free and fair for everyone. They provide models for how our systems can evolve, and now you are part of this tradition.
Voting is one step. There are many more ahead — conversations, organizing, showing up again and again. Democracy isn’t something that happens to us. It’s something we do, together, over a lifetime.
Welcome.