Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Gratitude Journal: Freedom



Today, I am grateful to live on free soil. Though I'm one small person, I still have the rights and freedoms to let my small voice be heard. I voted for the first time last week. I hit up the early voting, thought I'd avoid long lines. I left my "I VOTED" sticker on all day, and then I put it in my journal. It was an exciting experience. Last election, my eighteenth birthday was just a month shy of voting day. I remember feeling pretty bummed as all my friends voted but I couldn't. So it feels good to know I exercised my freedom. Regardless of who you vote for, I hope you marched proudly to the polls today (or earlier like I did).

I am so thankful to be an American citizen. I'm thankful for the brave men and women who keep this country home of the free and land of the brave. And I'm so thankful for the amazing men that we call our "Founding Fathers". Wouldn't it be cool to have been in their presence?

I am also extra thankful for the women who were involved in the fight for women's suffrage in our country. Many of those ladies were heavily persecuted, mocked, arrested, and assaulted for speaking out and fighting for female rights. Thanks to their determination, I can speak my mind and do something as simple as vote and not be arrested because of it. Ladies, we didn't have the right to vote until the 1920s. Isn't that crazy?

 "On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised their right to vote for the first time. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship."


No comments:

Post a Comment

Make my day. Leave a comment.