YOUR VOICE MATTERS !!!

Why is it important to vote? If we don’t then we can not say what we like what is going on in our country.  America stands for freedom. As Americans we have more freedom then other countries outside the United States of America. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize how hard many people had to fight for that freedom, not only with other countries but in the United States as well to help make everyone equal as the Constitution says.

It took a while to get to where we are today.  For many years, women were not treated as equals to men and did not get the right to vote until the 1920's.   Equal rights for African Americans were denied in many areas of the country until the 1960's when the fight let by Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges brought attention to these issues.  Also in the 1960's another groups fight to be equal was just starting to be heard in the fight for equal rights for people with disabilities.   President Kennedy, who had a sister with a disability was a leader who helped address this.

While during his time in office, there where laws and bills that began to have positive change. Lyndon B. Johnson took over after President Kennedy’s assassination and carried on the changes.  In 1965 people with disabilities finally had the right to vote.  That was not that long ago! Then in 1975 people with disabilities began to have the right to a proper education. 

Ok.  So now we have the right to vote, right to education, what about the right to work and be out in the committee …?   So we are getting closer to a more open minded world where we say everyone has the right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to live freely.  Fast-forward to 1990 when President George H. W. Bush passed the Americans with Disabilities Act which gave people the right to be able to work and be more apart of their community instead of being put out of site out of mind. This is why it is so important to have our voices heard nothing is changed by keeping silent.

So many things have changes for the better. In 2008 Barack Obama was elected the first African American president and we may soon have the first woman  elected as are president. But before that a man named Franklin D Roosevelt who battled polio was elected president 4 times during World War II.  It was very rare to see or hear of anyone with a disability back then holding a job much less being President of the United States.   The power to vote is important and with it we can make important changes.