“All oppressed people are in a constant struggle to reclaim what has been lost, protect what has been gained, and work to perfect equitable change.” – Kellie Carter Jackson

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Voter Identity

“Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising approach that we’ve been using toward getting our freedom.”

In my last semester at Prairie View I took a course on African Americans’ role and history in the American political system allowing me to build community and consciousness early in the morning. This was around the time I was working on Anti-Intellectualism and the Philosophy of Black Consciousness day and night to construct my own Black political theory. Usually writing is a solitary action but this time I had something to prove to myself and peers.I was presenting the paper too. I needed help outside of my writer’s ego,someone who I aspired to impress if I could figure out what I was trying to construct. I think it’s true that anyone is liable to be written about on a writer’s journey so I’ll start off with some quick memories from Dr. Melanye Price. It can be really easy to feel like you know everything until your professor reminds you in the most humblest way why the Dr is in front of their name. In the one hour we spent together she helped me outline my paper which may seem small but not to someone like me whose mind works in a million different directions. Her investment in my writing was like receiving a gold star for being a good doodle. I needed that academic validation, being a writer is hard enough, though I think I got the better end of the bargain seeing as she was my professor. I loved that class though I was occasionally late, it was nice to discuss Blackness in a restorative manner. Dr. Price invited us to consciously think about the ways African Americans have regressed or overcame disenfranchisement in this country. 

I left class each time feeling validated in my own love-hate relationship with the U.S afterwards I was empowered to speak up more. Outside of Dr. Price guidance I was having weekly conversation with my friend Gaimes which helped ease both our frustrations with the way Blackness is treated in this country. Its infuriating to consistently learn that Black culture and history is widely despised and targeted by white supremacy in such intimate ways. Right up until graduation Gaimes and I sat out in the courtyard each Tuesday and Thursday morning to digest the hard truths Dr.Price lectured about. Initially I met Gaimes while he was hosting an event on DEI. My friend had purposely brought me to this event since I had just written about it on TGW. Up until this point I was not in any community with men, especially not ones bringing conversations about DEI to campus. We sat by each other in class, I let him read early edits of my work, and he asked me questions that made me want to write even more. Writing was no longer solitary, I wanted to tell people I was a writer, I wanted to continue sharing that with people. 

Gaimes and I are in solidarity. We both understood that our Blackness could take us through a range of emotions in seconds.  Some internal dialogue centered around how we uproot pessimistic attitudes about building solidarity in the Black community, was our community really “cooked?” It’s silly to say outside of an online context because in real life we’re outside fighting. It’s intentional that people in and outside the community place blame on us for resisting voter suppression, police brutality, discriminatory legal policies, or whatever else white supremacy has stolen from us. Below our beautiful campus grounds lie enslaved African American who resisted but also dreamed of the timeline where I now walk across the stage freely. I’m angry because we owe it to them to build a better system, to pour love into our “beloved community.” The struggle doesn’t end with voting much like learning doesn’t end in the classroom. Voting is not an end all solution, we have the capacity to demand more from each other and those who’ve seized power. As Kellie Carter Jackson wrote, “All oppressed people are in a constant struggle to reclaim what has been lost, protect what has been gained, and work to perfect equitable change.” In protecting your voter identity, controlling the power of your ballot must move beyond electing a leader that vaguely represents the ideal of democracy. 60 years ago, Malcolm X told us, “If we don’t do something real soon, I think you’ll have to agree that we’re going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It’s one or the other in 1964. It isn’t that time is running out — time has run out!” In 2024 they’ve yet to run out of bullets for us and at any moment our right to the ballot can be eliminated. 

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Casting a ballot to get shot by the Bullet

“So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver — no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”

Texas Girl Writes started because life is mainly about asking questions, someone asks you questions and vice versa. Questions make you think, you have space to form an original thought and reflect on your lived experiences. From Black girl to woman I’ve been reminded externally that above all I am tied to my Black identity. On my Texas ballot I’ll be Black, working class, then a woman. I live in America but I’m more interested in the African part. I carry it with me. It brings me comfort knowing the history of our struggles, triumphs, failures, and liberated futures.

I thought about what it means to be African American/ Black when Gaimes asked. It stuck with me that all I do is recount our history and its presence. He thought it was outdated to which I agreed,since we are at the core of an imperial nation. I have no issue with African American I think it’s befitting given our history as for the American part to denounce that is also Black history. My stance was we have yet to imagine a future beyond African American so it should remain until we claim another identity for ourselves. I think bell hooks sums it up, “It is the telling of our history that enables political self discovery.” 

Dr. Price, bell hooks, and Kellie Jackson are relatable representations in my life not because of their Blackness but their commitment to community. Representation can be substantive or descriptive. Descriptive representation is voting based on personal attributes and substantive representation is the quality of the representation. Our quality sucks, it’s always been old white men with the exception of 1. We weren’t considered citizens or human until we got the ballot though I believe we still aren’t fully recognized as either. It feels like we are tolerated in this nation until we get too loud about said quality.

We don’t need our representation to “save democracy,” we need them to stop holding the vote over our heads. We need them to listen when we say lower the price of food and everything we are humanly entitled to. I don’t want them to use my vote to send arms and weaponry to murder Black and Brown humans domestically or abroad. I don’t want them to debate whether or not colonizers should “finish the job.” My vote, your vote, everyone’s vote has power until a dollar is added into the equation. I don’t need them to promise me anything when I’ve seen real change. Frankly, “They have got a con game going on, a political con game, and you and I are in the middle. It’s time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and trying to understand it like it is; and then we can deal with it like it is.” 

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Political Consciousness

“Don’t be throwing out any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.”

I wouldn’t wait for me to explain the positives of voting; it seems redundant. I’m going to tell you to study voting specifically how our representation responds when we protest to vote.There’s a lot of litmus test in voting, one of the biggest examples is currently in Atlanta. At base level we understand we vote in politicians who are supposed to create favorable policies that benefit voters. South Atlanta comrades are resisting the actual threat to democracy, police. The debate was held in Atlanta where the democratic nominee boasted, “we put more police on the street than any other administration.” The police in Atlanta are trained to protect the city’s 90 million dollar training facility investment. Increasing police surveillance, destroying the Weelaunee Forest, and intimidating voters boils down to reactionary defenses by the state. Cop cities are being built across the nation while the forest defenders are imprisoned. If they cannot break your voter spirit on the outside they will incarcerate you to ensure you have no identity. Forest defenders attempted to use their ballot through, “a referendum campaign to repeal the 2021 ordinance leasing land to the Atlanta Police Foundation. It would be the first time a popular referendum (meaning a vote on a policy instead of a politician) has been used in Atlanta.” In the “con game” we assume once we band together the unjust forces will bend to our demands forgetting the goal post is movable with money and power. 

” But when the campaign submitted their 116,000 signatures by the new deadline — significantly more than all votes cast in Atlanta’s last mayoral election and almost double the amount required to get on the ballot — the city rejected them on the grounds that the campaign had missed the original deadline, arguing that since the lawsuit was being appealed, the new deadline was false. That appeal is currently with the Eleventh Circuit. “

That was the ballot the official bullet(s) were fired by police officers encapsulating that collective action beyond voting is built on the sacrifice of activists. Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Teran should be living and enjoying a life free of Cop City. Do we vote away police brutality? What is our reward other than the bullet, the cell, the grave. The same police that shoot us in the forest are the ones committing genocide. Voting is about Atlanta,Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, Congo, Hawaii, real voting is what keeps us interconnected. I say in 2024 it’s still the ballot or the bullet. Do not tell me to vote without being able to tell me what is going to happen to the unhoused, queer, Black, disabled, neurodivergent, incarcerated or any other victims of the “American System.” The time of political consciousness is high. We are educating each other in ways they cannot sabotage. An informed vote is cast from the heart out of solidarity. Revolution is alive, “if this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it’s not a country of freedom, change it. We will work with anybody, anywhere, at any time, who is genuinely interested in tackling the problem head-on” Voter consciousness is to liberate through the ballot if it doesn’t achieve that we have to take action, there needs to be no fear of the bullet.