Urban Thought Collective

I live in Atlanta, GA, a city that is predominantly, blissfully black. One of the hottest new catchphrases where I live that follows shortly after a “Shawty what yo’ name is?” or an “Eh, my man!” is “Have you voted???”

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, thirty-five percent of eligible voters in the state of Georgia have voted early as of November 1 - THIRTY FIVE PERCENT. This is a staggering statistic as a largely African-American state with a history of lukewarm voter turnout faced early voting lines lasting up to five hours and beyond just to exercise one of our American civic duties. Yet brave these lines Georgians did, lest they face the communal policing of its own; I haven’t seen such peer pressure to do the right thing since the days of the “ABC Afterschool Special.”

Sure, the drive to vote in the black community has been spurred on by the first of what I hope are a series of once-in-my-lifetime presidential candidates like the biracial Barack Obama. Whether he wins or loses the race for the White House - and according to every relevant poll, projection, and spiritual affirmation on record, he WILL win - Senator Obama’s (gasp!) “community organizing” has birthed a generation of new and first-time voters that truly believe that every vote counts. It’s gotten so bad that my friends deride me for having voted California absentee ballot: “Barack’s got Cali on lock! They need your vote HERE!” Umm, given the court-challenged systematic voter roll purges, tens of thousands of discarded new voter registrations, and other nefarious election shenanigans around here, I think I’m good.

Still, such an outward, community and region-wide investment in representative democracy and the American electoral system is indicative of a mood normally associated with those newly democratic Third World countries or the ’60s. To paraphrase our Future First Lady, for the first time in our lives, we feel truly proud to be Americans. And it only took the possibility of a President who looks like us - fancy that.

Man at the post office: “I’d like a book of stamps. And have you voted?”

Woman sits at a bar: “I’d like a rum and coke. Oh - have you voted?”

Homeless man on the corner of Ashby & Abernathy: “Could you spare a little change. Have you voted yet???”

By the time you read this, it will be Election Day
I don’t care if you’re voting for Crankpa and the MILF who can see Russia from her deck chair or the guy who can’t bowl and Scranton’s finest. I have only one question for you…

Nice! Good answer.

UTC’s resident film critic Edwardo Jackson is the author of the novels EVER AFTER and NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random House), a writer for The 213 Magazine, and an LA-based screenwriter. Visit his website at www.edwardojackson.com where his new novel I DO? is available NOW.