After quickly leaving my first Zoom class of the day, I frantically prepared to leave my house at around noon on November 3rd. While pulling on my socks, I simultaneously refreshed my phone for the tenth time that morning to make sure the polling location in my neighborhood was still open. Assured by the message on the NYS voting page, I zipped up my jacket and rushed out the door.
I headed towards the polling site at an elementary school that was a short ten-minute walk from where I lived. Any other day, I would have taken the time to admire the beautiful fall foliage around me. But the gravity of this date only pushed me to walk just a tiny bit faster with sheer determination to reach my destination as quickly as possible.
As I made my way down familiar streets, I could not help but notice signs propped up on lawns and flags hung anywhere from front porches to the back of pickup trucks. The neighbors who I thought I knew seemed to pick up a different identity in almost an instant once these signs cropped up, sending a message I didn’t even want to try to comprehend.
However, the heaviness I felt as I passed by these signs was only lifted when I arrived at the polling site and became witness to the country’s microcosm in front of me.
People of different ages, backgrounds, and cultures were darting in and out of the polling site before me, and I could not help but feel a certain sense of pride when it dawned on me that I was contributing to something so powerful and unifying.
Parents with young children, adults with elderly relatives, a young Indian couple, an older black gentleman, and two hijabi women all stood before me in line to cast their vote and have their same say in a democracy.
As I was leaving the building, I sparked a conversation with a poll worker who also served as the center’s bilingual coordinator.
A first time voter as well, he noted that “It’s been the first time I feel the need to personally help out…not even myself but those who don’t have a voice or are intimidated.”
This election really could be encapsulated in those few words. The America I have been lucky to grow up in is filled with people of all different backgrounds who deserve all the same rights. The privilege I had in voting last Tuesday was not just for myself but for everyone who wanted to see a change in the country we call our own.