Crow’s Feet Writing Prompt #68-Voting

Only Once Did I Consider Not Voting

“NEITHER in ‘68”

Barry Silverstein
Crow’s Feet
Published in
3 min readOct 10, 2024

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Chicago Democratic Convention 1968 — National Guard and Demonstrators. Photo by Fred Mason with Liberation News Service. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I was brought up to respect American democracy and to believe that casting a vote each year was a right that should be taken seriously. As a result, I have voted in every annual election since 1966.

Only once in my life did I consider not voting. It was in 1968, arguably one of the most hideous years in American history.

I was a student at New York University. It was a heck of a time to be on a college campus in the middle of New York’s Greenwich Village — an epicenter of the counterculture/anti-war/pro-equality movement. My fellow students and I were increasingly outraged by America’s role in the Vietnam War and what we viewed as the country’s unjust racial and gender inequality.

As Dickens famously wrote, referring to a different era, it was the best of times and the worst of times. It was the best of times when Democratic President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election and Eugene McCarthy and then Bobby Kennedy entered the race. But it was the worst of times when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.

After Kennedy’s death, I did what many college students did and threw my support behind Eugene McCarthy. But the Democratic…

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Crow’s Feet
Crow’s Feet

Published in Crow’s Feet

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

Barry Silverstein
Barry Silverstein

Written by Barry Silverstein

Author and retired marketing pro. I write about brands, people and pop culture with an eye on history. Please visit my website: www.barrysilverstein.com