Seventy-Six Million Voices

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Anyone who reads this blog knows I worked election day as Judge of elections in my district. I’d decided months ago I was going to serve. If I was going to get Covid, it would be after I cast my vote to oust Trump and his GOP enablers. Like everyone else working the polls that day, I spent 15 straight hours wearing a mask and plastic face shield. I didn’t think much about the value of what we were doing. But all day long people thanked us for our services as they came and quickly went having exercised their rights. People brought us pizza and water and one little girl and her mother brought us homemade butter cookies. It felt good to be seen, to be appreciated. I didn’t think much more about it until Saturday night when both the President-elect and the Vice President-elect made a point of thanking every poll worker for their service. They thanked us even as Donald Trump worked to demonize poll workers, voters themselves and delegitimize the election results. The contrast was stark—even starker than the evidence at the Presidential debates.

I struggled to identify the source of my stinging eyes, the burning in my throat, the tightness in my chest. As I fell asleep, I realized what I felt was hope rising, a restored faith in our country and its soon-to-be leaders.

For four long year, Donald Trump roared, he puffed out his chest, he intimidated and pounced on those he perceived as being weaker. He was fierce, hungry. Cowards cowered. Yet on Saturday, November 7, we discovered Donald J. Trump was but a paper tiger. And we the people—particularly the people of Philadelphia, having had enough, through the power of the vote, brought a biblical rain down on the paper tiger. Now he swirls about in the gutter like last week’s newspaper after yesterday’s rain. His once mighty roar reduced to a cracked, repetitive whine: I won, I won, while seventy-six million voices now its own roar, shout back, No, you did not.

Photo by Sam on Unsplash



 

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