This is supposedly a blog for writers, but this particular writer is taking time to cheer, not for an editorial acceptance, but ACCEPTANCE on a grand scale. One hundred years ago this month women won their long battle for what should have been theirs from the beginning: the right to vote. At our nation’s birth “all men” were deemed “equal,” but that left out more than half the population. As Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, when he helped form the new government, “Don’t forget the women.” Unfortunately, he and his compatriots did just that.

I can imagine the exhausted but triumphant Suffragettes that heady day 100 years ago when the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote, was added to the Constitution of the United States But I can’t imagine how they would feel if they saw us today with a woman on the national election ticket. Note that I said “a woman,” not “a Black woman,” though Kamala Harris is that, too. This triumph doesn’t belong to one race, but to all races, and to all women, and it transcends political party.

Yet I’m also wary, for I remind myself that when a Black man was elected president, I naively thought it meant the end of racism in our country. We know now how far we had to go – still have to go. So I’m under no illusion that Harris being the vice-presidential nominee will mean the end of gender discrimination or racial hatred. But recently I heard a rabbi preach that although the world is dark around us, if something good happens we shouldn’t be afraid to celebrate it . So let’s take time to rejoice in a historic marker that not only belongs to Harris, but to all of us.

We can also choose to do what she did: use our talents in meaningful ways – whether its working for the election, donating to an immigrant cause, helping to feed the elderly, whatever and wherever. Our place isn’t on the sidelines any more.

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: COME and GO – available at BookBaby.com, Widow’s Walk –iUniverse.com, Turning Toward Tomorrow –Xlibris.com, Ten Women of Valor and Role Play– both available through Amazon.com and Amazon kindle.