Is There a Place For Us? Only #Whenweallvote

Issue 209 — November 7, 2022

Voting is a form of leadership. My grandparents, who were immigrants and entrepreneurs, taught me that everyone has an obligation to participate in the community. If you have not already cast your vote in the crucial midterm elections, here is where you can go to make sure your vote counts, where and how to vote in your state, and information about where candidates stand on issues of concern to you. Here is an easy to use resource to find out what is on the ballot where you vote, how to get help if you experience a problem casting your vote, and more.

What does this have to do with gender parity in leadership? It’s fundamental: on the ballot are your voting rights, equal rights, and reproductive rights, all of which impact women’s economic status. They go directly to your pocketbook and whether you will have an equal opportunity to rise in your career. Be sure you know where candidates stand on all those issues and let that inform your vote.

But let me go backward in time to explain why I feel so strongly that voting is leadership and understanding how to be an effective citizen civic is fundamental to women’s rights.

Last weekend I stepped into my past. That Texas sky…and the soft air in Temple Texas felt like home even though I haven’t been here for probably 40 years. I was excited that we were having a family reunion here in the town where I was born, as was my mother. I checked into my hotel, looking forward to seeing many cousins and sharing family lore.

Woven into the sweetness of reunion was the bittersweet interment of my sister Candy’s ashes in the viscous Blackland Prairie soil of the cemetery in Waco, Texas. I had promised her long before it would be a reality that she would be buried next to our maternal grandmother with whom we had lived during our early years.

And so I had lugged her ashes from Arizona to Texas in a heavy pottery urn that she— a talented potter — had made herself. Though of course she didn’t know at the time that it would be her final resting place.

There are so many things we don’t know will be filled with unanticipated meaning at the time that we do them.

Both the reunion with cousins I hadn’t seen in many years, as well as a few I’d never met before, and the memorial for my sister in the cemetery where all four of our grandparents are buried connected me with our family history in profound ways.

These grandparents who are the progenitors of the family members who met in our reunion this weekend would never have missed an opportunity to vote, because they came from countries where their citizenship status and voting rights were never secure. They knew that #votingispower and #votingisleadership and the only way to maintain a free society is free and fair elections. That’s why at Take The Lead’s Power Up Conference on Women’s Equality Day, I included a workshop on how to be an effective citizen. And why Take The Lead has teamed up with When We All Vote to help make nonpartisan information about voting available to all, and to encourage voting.

In preparation for my sister’s memorial, Cantor Monica O’Desky who led the service asked me what music Candy liked. My sister was an accomplished musician with an MFA and a masters in library science which she combined to become the head music cataloguer at Harvard’s esteemed Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library.

I told the cantor that Candy liked anything by Leonard Bernstein. She chose a perfect song to honor my sister while at the same time it honored our grandparents who had come to America looking for a place for themselves and their families to flourish. A place where diversity was a cherished advantage rather than something to be feared and fought. A place where we could all be who we are and be respected for it.

The song was “A Place for Us” from “West Side Story.” While written as a love song between the main characters, the opening stanza sums up a much larger yearning: “There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us, peace and quiet and open air wait for us somewhere.” Here are the full lyrics.

Let’s not become like the countries my grandparents came here to escape. When we all vote and participate actively in the civic life of the country, government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” to quote Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address, will be a place for each of us to achieve our highest and best intentions.