Can we really affect America’s politics?
As American citizens, we are legally allowed by the Constitution’s amendments to vote. The 15th amendment disallows the government from interfering with one’s ability to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The 19th amendment disallows the government from interfering with one’s ability to vote “on account of sex.” The 26th amendment allows those “who are eighteen years of age or older” to vote. While these amendments allow for participation in elections, does this necessarily mean we can actually affect our country’s politics?
To answer this question, let us travel back in time. Five years ago on August 9, 2014, unarmed eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by white law enforcement officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The death of Brown spurred a massive public outcry. This event placed its foundations in the Black Lives Matter social movement, which had started a year prior after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida. The movement only gained more momentum in the following year, building on the deaths of other black men, such as John Crawford in Dayton, Ohio and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, and deeply dividing the opinions of Americans.
Less than two weeks after the shooting of Brown, the Pew Research Center published results from a public opinion survey it had conducted about what Ferguson and racial identity meant in terms of a larger, national conversation. Of the blacks that responded, 80 percent of them believed that Brown’s shooting had raised important issues about race whereas 47 percent of whites believed race was getting more attention than it deserved.
In 2015 on the first anniversary of Brown’s death, Ferguson was once again subject to violent protests. With peaceful protests in the day and violent in the night, Ferguson’s two facedness had proved to not changed at all. However, this time the police response was different. Instead of handling the protestors forcefully while in uniform, the officers came out in polo shirts and calmly talked to the protestors in an attempt to deescalate the situation.
To add onto that, the Black Lives Matter movement had gained the attention of political leaders, especially those that were running for the 2016 political election. Bernie Sanders was asked once if black lives mattered or if all lives mattered, and he immediately responded that black lives mattered. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley also agreed with the statement. Members of Congress were also paying attention to the movement and on the eve of Martin Luther King holiday in 2015, leading black members of Congress gave a speech in a Ferguson church.
Representative André Carson said, “We are not here to tell you what to do…[but] just to let you know that you’ve got some firepower in Washington D.C.” In August of 2015, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that “…Ferguson protesters announced on Friday Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end killings by the police in the United States, and a website to help voters keep track of whee political candidates stand on police brutality.”
So, can we really affect American politics? I say it depends on several factors. What happened to cause your actions? Have you gotten attention? Who is on your side? And as in the words of political scientist Terry Jones, “Anyone who says ‘I don’t think the world is right as it is’ should be prepared to answer the question, ‘Well, what do you want to do about it?’ ”
