Happy Sunday, everyone. Are you ready for some good news?
With the midterm elections just nine days away, it’s hard to miss the constant threats to our democracy. And they’re not just coming from the White House. In state election boards and county offices, Republican officials have been closing polling places and making it harder to cast a ballot. The bet is that enough people will get tired, give up, and stay home.
But this month, a group of college students made it clear that their gamble will backfire.
In 2024, students at North Carolina A&T, the largest HBCU in the country, could vote right on campus. So could students across town at UNC Greensboro. This year, they asked for those polling places back. The Republican majority on the state elections board said no. Its chairman said he didn’t like voting sites on college campuses because parking is hard to find.
But those students didn’t need parking to vote. They didn’t even need cars. On October 15th, the first day of early voting in North Carolina, they decided to walk. More than a hundred students from A&T and UNCG set out from their campuses, picking up others along the way, and marched to the closest early voting site downtown. It took close to an hour each way. In some places the sidewalk just ended, and they had to walk in the street. More than anything, they wanted every member of that board to hear them.
You just have to watch this:
When they got there, the line was out the door. They could’ve left and come back another day, but plenty of students stayed in line. Some even waited three hours. Xavier Jones, one of the A&T organizers, explained why: “They are betting that you are too tired, too apathetic and have no attention span … but we are here.” By the end of the day, more than 300 ballots had been cast at that one site. For some of those students, it was the first ballot they’d ever cast.
If you know your history, Greensboro and A&T should ring a bell. On February 1, 1960, four A&T freshmen walked into the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, sat down at the whites-only lunch counter, and asked to be served. When they were refused, they stayed in their seats. Within weeks, sit-ins were spreading across the South. Sixty-six years later, students from the same school walked downtown again, for the same basic reason. They wanted to be counted.
It isn’t just happening in Greensboro. In Tarrant County, Texas, despite its growing population, the Republican majority on the county commission voted last month to cut a whopping 92 polling places. One of the sites they cut was at the University of Texas at Arlington, where students had voted for more than a decade. Last Wednesday, UTA students gathered outside their student center and marched to the polls too. “We never give up no matter the circumstance,” one of the organizers said. They plan to do it again on the last day of early voting.
And that kind of enthusiasm isn’t limited to college campuses. Early voting is running ahead of normal across the country, and Georgia had the biggest first day of early voting in its midterm history. Even in Tarrant County, far more people showed up on day one than four years ago.
Look, I’ve spent a lot of the last five years warning people about the threats to our democracy. Some days it feels like shouting into the wind. But watching a crowd of twenty-year-olds walking to their polling place, demanding their voices be heard, I can’t help but feel some hope.
For years, young people have been told that they don’t show up. Tell that to the kids in Greensboro. Young Americans are angry. They’re angry about the cost of living, about the direction of the country, and about leaders who treat their votes as a problem to be managed. “For too long, the young people have been silenced,” another UTA organizer said. “We’re standing up against that because we do matter.”
Here’s the thing about making it harder to vote: it only works if we let them win. When the people in charge start moving the polling places, the best answer is to show up anyway. These kids knew that.
So here’s my ask. Be happy about this, sure. Share that video. Let it give you a little hope, because it should. But don’t stop there. If you haven’t voted yet, make a plan this week. Look up where your polling place is, even if you think you know. If it moved, go find it. If the line is long, stay in it. If a bunch of college kids can walk the better part of an hour to cast a ballot, the rest of us can find a way to get there too.
As the famous song says, “The kids are alright.”
And that, my friends, is good news for your Sunday.
— Adam
Loving the good news! Keep it coming!
I wonder why I cannot even read this today. My brain is overcome with dread of being let down again by the results of the mid-term. I do not think my heart can take much more disappointment. The last ten years have taken their toll. I will give your piece a “heart” and move on and hope that my optimism and fire for change is stoked again.