Before I get to today’s post, a quick reminder that the new course I’m co-facilitating at Corporeal Writing begins on Sunday. I’ve posted my thoughts on how my first online class with Lidia Yuknavitch revolutionized my writing career on Instagram.

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Step 12: Skywriting and Earthwriting

On Tuesday, The Intelligencer published the article “12 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote,” and it stirred up frustration on social media when I posted it. Some of the reasons given by the 21-29 year olds interviewed were:

• “I feel like the Democratic Party doesn’t really stand for the things I believe in anymore. Why should I vote for a party that doesn’t really do anything for me as a voter?”
• “I’m trying to register in my hometown of Austin, Texas. It’s such a tedious process to even get registered in Texas, let alone vote as an absentee. There’s no notification service about the status of my voter registration.”
• “It was easier to get my medical-marijuana card — not a right, or even federally legal — than it was to register to vote.”
• “I vote when I feel like I have to. But I mostly consider it something that sucks a lot of people’s time and energy away from actually building power with the people around them.”

Don’t blame them – blame us. This country is in desperate need of voter reform. If I could afford to hire a skywriter to fly across the country to tell everyone to vote on November 6, I’d do it. Skywriting is Step 12 in how to destroy a dictatorship, and although it’s a rare art in the U.S. today, it’s still used in nonviolent movements around the world.

For the love of everything, talk to every under 30 eligible voter in your life and encourage them to vote in this election. No vote means a vote FOR this. Click on the “I WILL VOTE” image below to find out where your poll place is, and please share the link – liberally.