An empty conference panel. I’ll most likely be a participant in an upcoming panel later this summer to talk about lowering the voting age to 16.
This is pretty much a continuation of last month’s post, but with a twist. Rather than a call for panelists or a story about lowering the voting age, I wanted to talk about efforts by a local pioneering who was native to Boston to bring about change.
In the late 19th century, the world wasn’t a friendly place for women’s suffrage. It wouldn’t be until almost half a century later before women even got the right to vote in the United States. However, women suffragists did many things to change this, often voicing their opinion in the form of protests during the day. One such woman, Annie Londonderry, literally took her message around the world to bring about change & better attention to the plight of fellow women suffragists.
You can read more about Londonderry here, but the short story of it is, Londonderry had traveled around the world to advocate for greater rights for women. Women had very few rights compared to men in those days, despite the only reason preventing them from social mobilization was because society saw them as the wrong gender. Londonderry disagreed with this injustice and sought about for a way to change the world for the better.
Mrs. Londonderry began her global trip in late June of 1894, spending the next 15 months traveling around the world by bicycle to advocate for women’s suffrage. By late summer of 1895, the Boston native had made it back to her home city, bringing much attention to the plight of fellow suffragists of her time. In fact, her contribution was so notable that fellow famed women’s suffragist, Susan B. Anthony, weighed in on Mrs. Londonderry’s trek, which would not have been possible without the help of the bicycle: “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world“.
In 2015, I walked across the United States to bring attention to lowering the voting age to 16. Although my efforts might seem miniscule compared to what Londonderry had done more than a century prior, we share many commonalities. Like Londonderry, I believe it is the next frontier of suffrage in this modern world. It already exists in many places around the globe- you can find them online or read some of the numerous blog posts I’ve been writing over the years. We even have some cities in the United States that have already lowered the voting age. Like Londonderry, we both saw an injustice that we both wanted to solve, and actually did something about it. Finally, like Londonderry, we were both faced with insurmountable odds, yet continued to persevere.
However, unlike in Londonderry’s time, women had very few tools to fight with to enable women’s suffrage. Women were barred from voting, much less hold office, men were prioritized when talking to the public media and there were no social media platforms that existed. Even if such things were around at the time, men would have likely tried to also bar women from accessing it as a soapbox to air their grievances. Right now, we have House Joint Resolution 16, and now, a great opportunity to actually lower the voting age to 16 like the numerous places around the world that have already done so. Nothing is impossible if we work together, and the Frontiers of Democracy Conference is our shot to bring the issue of lowering the voting age to the forefront of mainstream media.
We might be able to lower the voting age now, we might not. We won’t know though until we try. While we’re in the midst of the basketball playoff season &,just finished March Madness & the emergency that the pandemic brought to the world, a quote often sticks out to me- “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”. I would rather take a shot at doing something & failing it, then to not have taken the shot & wondering with regret if I could have made a difference. It might be a long shot, but a chance is a chance, so we must take the opportunities we have before us & not waste them.
But like Londonderry in 1894, she had a dream that someday in the future, a woman’s voice would be equally valued as a man’s voice whether it be an opinion, a preference or any other statement that a woman weighed in on. Eventually, her dream became true. Her dream didn’t stay a dream- it became a reality. Like Londonderry, I too believe that we’re not too far from the edges of democracy, where we can bring in those at the edges of the frontier that have been too long excluded from the voting booth. Like Londonderry, I’m not just a dreamer, I’m a reality-maker. You too can make the dream of lowering the voting age to 16 a reality. We have that opportunity now.
Please support me & my allies working with me on lowering the voting age to16!
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