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Why bother?
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The game is rigged.
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My vote won't count.
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The choices are terrible.
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Voting is for suckers.
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Perhaps you've thought
some of these things.
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Perhaps you've even said them.
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And if so, you wouldn't be alone
and you wouldn't be entirely wrong.
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The game of public policy today
is rigged in many ways.
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How else would more than half
of federal tax breaks
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flow up to the wealthiest
five percent of Americans?
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And our choices indeed are often terrible.
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For many people across
the political spectrum,
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Exhibit A is the 2016
Presidential election.
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But in any year, you can look
up and down the ballot
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and find plenty to be uninspired about.
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But in spite of all of this,
I still believe voting matters.
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And crazy as it may sound,
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I believe that we can revive
the joy of voting.
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Today, I want to talk about
how we can do that, and why.
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There used to be a time
in American history when voting was fun,
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when it was much more than just
a grim duty to show up at the polls.
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That time is called
"most of American history."
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(Laughter)
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From the Revolution
to the Civil Rights Era,
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the United States had a vibrant,
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robustly participatory
and raucous culture of voting.
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It was street theater, open-air debates,
fasting and feasting and toasting,
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parades and bonfires.
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During the 19th century, immigrants
and urban political machines
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helped fuel this culture of voting.
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That culture grew
with each successive wave
-
of new voters.
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During Reconstruction, when new
African-American voters,
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new African-American citizens,
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began to exercise their power,
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they celebrated in jubilee parades
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that connected emancipation
with their newfound right to vote.
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A few decades later, the Suffragettes
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brought a spirit of theatricality
to their fight,
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marching together in white dresses
as they claimed the franchise.
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And the Civil Rights Movement,
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which sought to redeem the promise
of equal citizenship
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that had been betrayed by Jim Crow,
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put voting right at the center.
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From Freedom Summer to the march in Selma,
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that generation of activists
knew that voting matters,
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and they knew that spectacle
and the performance of power
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is key to actually claiming power.
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But it's been over a half century
since Selma and the Voting Rights Act,
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and in the decades since,
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this face-to-face culture of voting
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has just about disappeared.
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It's been killed by television
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and then the Internet.
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The couch has replaced the commons.
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Screens have made
citizens into spectators.
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And while it's nice to share
political memes on social media,
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that's a rather quiet kind of citizenship.
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It's what the sociologist Sherry Turkle
calls "being alone together."
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What we need today
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is an electoral culture that is about
being together together,
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in person,
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in loud and passionate ways,
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so that instead of being
"eat your vegetables" or "do you duty,"
-
voting can feel more like
"join the club"
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or, better yet, "join the party."
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Imagine if we had,
across the country right now,
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in local places but nationwide,
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a concerted effort to revive
a face-to-face set of ways
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to engage and electioneer:
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outdoor shows in which candidates
and their causes are mocked
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and praised in broad satirical style;
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soapbox speeches by citizens;
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public debates held inside pubs;
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streets filled with political art
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and handmade posters and murals;
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battle of the band concerts in which
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competing performers rep their candidates.
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Now, all of this may sound a little bit
18th century to you,
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but in fact, it doesn't have to be
any more 18th century than,
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say, Broadway's "Hamilton,"
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which is to say vibrantly contemporary.
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And the fact is that all around the world,
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today, millions of people
are voting like this.
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In India, elections are colorful,
communal affairs.
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In Brazil, election day is a festive,
carnival-type atmosphere.
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In Taiwan and Hong Kong,
there is a spectacle,
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eye-popping, eye-grabbing spectacle
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to the street theater of elections.
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You might ask, well, here in America,
who has time for this?
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And I would tell you
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that the average American watches
five hours of television a day.
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You might ask, who has the motivation?
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And I'll tell you,
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any citizen who wants to be seen and heard
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not as a prop, not as a talking point,
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but as a participant, as a creator.
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Well, how do we make this happen?
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Simply by making it happen.
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That's why a group of colleagues and I
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launched a new project
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called "The Joy of Voting."
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In four cities across the United States --
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Philadelphia, Miami,
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Akron, Ohio, and Wichita, Kansas --
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we've gathered together
artists and activists,
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educators, political folks,
neighbors, everyday citizens
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to come together to create projects
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that can foster this culture of voting
in a local way.
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In Miami, that means all-night parties
with hot DJs where the only way
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to get in is to show
that you're registered to vote.
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In Akron, it means political plays
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being performed in the bed
of a flatbed truck
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that moves from neighborhood
to neighborhood.
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In Philadelphia, it's a voting-themed
scavenger hunt
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all throughout colonial old town,
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and in Wichita, it's making mixtapes
and live graffiti art
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in the North End to get out the vote.
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There are 20 of these projects,
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and they are remarkable
in their beauty and their diversity,
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and they are changing people.
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Let me tell you about a couple of them.
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In Miami, we've commissioned and artist,
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a young artist named Atomico,
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to create some vivid and vibrant images
for a new series of "I voted" stickers.
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But the thing is, Atomico had never voted.
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He wasn't even registered.
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So as he got to work on creating
this artwork for these stickers,
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he also began to get over his sense
of intimidation about politics.
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He got himself registered,
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and then he got educated
about the upcoming primary election,
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and on election day he was out there
not just passing out stickers,
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but chatting up voters
and encouraging people to vote,
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and talking about
the election with passersby.
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In Akron, a theater company called
the Wandering Aesthetics
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has been putting on
these pickup truck plays.
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And to do so, they put out
an open call to the public
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asking for speeches, monologues,
dialogues, poems,
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snippets of anything
that could be read aloud
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and woven into a performance.
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They got dozens of submissions.
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One of them was a poem
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written by nine students in an ESL class,
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all of them Hispanic migrant workers
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from nearby Hartville, Ohio.
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I want to read to you from this poem.
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It's called "The Joy of Voting."
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I would like to vote for the first time
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because things are changing for Hispanics.
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I used to be afraid of ghosts.
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Now I am afraid of people.
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There's more violence and racism.
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Voting can change this.
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The border wall is nothing.
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It's just a wall.
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The wall of shame is something.
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It's very important to vote
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so we can break down this wall of shame.
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I have passion in my heart.
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Voting gives me a voice and power.
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I can stand up and do something.
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The Joy of Voting project
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isn't just about joy.
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It's about this passion.
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It's about feeling and belief,
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and it isn't just our organization's work.
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All across this country right now,
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immigrants, young people, veterans,
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people of all different backgrounds
are coming together to create
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this kind of passionate, joyful activity
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around elections,
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in red and blue states,
in urban and rural communities,
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people of every political background.
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What they have in common is simply this:
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their work is rooted in place.
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Because remember,
all citizenship is local.
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When politics becomes
just a presidential election,
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we yell and we scream at our screens,
and then we collapse, exhausted.
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But when politics is about us
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and our neighbors and other people
in our community
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coming together to create experiences
of collective voice and imagination,
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then we begin to remember
that this stuff matters.
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We begin to remember that this
is the stuff of self-government.
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Which brings me back to where I began.
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Why bother?
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There's one way to answer this question.
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Voting matters because it is
a self-fulfilling act of belief.
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It feeds the spirit of mutual interest
that makes any society thrive.
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When we vote, even if it is in anger,
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we are part of a collective,
creative leap of faith.
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Voting helps us generate the very power
that we wish we had.
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It's no accident that democracy
and theater emerged
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around the same time in ancient Athens.
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Both of them yank the individual
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out of the enclosure of her private self.
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Both of them create great
public experiences of shared ritual.
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Both of them bring the imagination to life
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in ways that remind us that
all of our bonds in the end
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are imagined, and can be reimagined.
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This moment right now,
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when we think about
the meaning of imagination,
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is so fundamentally important,
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and our ability to take that spirit
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and to take that sense
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that there is something greater out there,
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is not just a matter
of technical expertise.
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It's not just a matter of making
the time or having the know-how.
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It is a matter of spirit.
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But let me give you an answer
to this question, "Why bother?"
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that is maybe a little less spiritual
and a bit more pointed.
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Why bother voting?
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Because there is no
such thing as not voting.
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Not voting is voting,
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for everything that you
may detest and oppose.
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Not voting can be dressed up
as an act of principled,
-
passive resistance,
-
but in fact not voting
-
is actively handing power over
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to those whose interests
are counter to your own,
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and those who would be very glad
to take advantage of your absence.
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Not voting is for suckers.
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Imagine where this country would be
if all the folks who in 2010
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created the Tea Party had decided
that you know, politics is too messy,
-
voting is too complicated.
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There is no possibility of our votes
adding up to anything.
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They didn't preemptively
silence themselves.
-
They showed up,
-
and in the course of showing up,
they changed American politics.
-
Imagine if all of the followers
of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders
-
had decided not to upend
the political status quo
-
and blow apart the frame
of the previously possible
-
in American politics.
-
They did that by voting.
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We live in a time right now,
-
divided, often very dark,
-
where across the left and the right,
there's a lot of talk of revolution
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and the need for revolution
to disrupt everyday democracy.
-
Well here's the thing:
-
everyday democracy already gives us
a playbook for revolution.
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In the 2012 Presidential election,
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young voters, Latino voters,
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Asian-American voters,
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low-income voters,
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all showed up at less than 50 percent.
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In the 2014 midterm elections,
turnout was 36 percent,
-
which was a 70-year low.
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And in your average local election,
turnout hovers
-
somewhere around 20 percent.
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I invite you to imagine 100 percent.
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Picture 100 percent.
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Mobilize 100 percent,
-
and overnight, we get revolution.
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Overnight, the policy priorities
of this country change dramatically,
-
and every level of government
becomes radically more responsive
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to all the people.
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What would it take
to mobilize 100 percent?
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Well, we do have to push back
against efforts afoot
-
all across the country right now
-
to make voting harder.
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But at the same time,
-
we have to actively create
a positive culture of voting
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that people want to belong to,
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be part of, and experience together.
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We have to make purpose.
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We have to make joy.
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So yes, let's have that revolution,
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a revolution of spirit, of ideas,
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of policy and participation,
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a revolution against cynicism,
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a revolution against the self-fulfilling
sense of powerlessness.
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Let's vote this revolution into existence,
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and while we're at it,
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let's have some fun.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)