What can one person do?

I know the question well.

No matter how noble the cause, how moral the action, how important the election, we each face the monsters of indecision and uncertainty.

An old monster has reappeared among us: “Should I vote my conscience and waste my vote?”

I don’t mean to make light of this question, or of any uncertainty each of us has as we face the moral and social responsibilities that living in society demands.

I too must face this question head on, and wonder about another: “Does it even matter what I do? I’m only one person.”

But, I have been fortunate to meet people who took on the challenge that Mahatma Gandhi presented when he said: “We must be the change we wish to see.”

I was a freshman in high school when the New Orleans public buses became integrated.

The law said to do it, but weeks went by before I saw anyone leave the back seat and take a seat a few rows forward.

I remember being afraid, wondering how that old man had decided that today would be the day.

The “law” and all the civil rights speeches may have made the action possible, but that man had to get up and take another seat for his and my world to change

About 15 years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund – an advocacy non-profit for children’s rights and education.

We were left alone as the press and VIPs ran all over looking for her car. Seizing the moment, I asked her how she thought she could accomplish what at that time seemed to me impossible goals.

She answered that she was a good horsefly and would just keep biting the big lazy mule until it moved.

Little by little, she knew it would have to move, and she would get her work done.

This past week I have been honored to drive Doris “Granny D” Haddock around New Orleans – one stop in her national trek to register working women to vote. She is 94 years young.

At 90, she walked across the US to bring critical attention to campaign finance reform, and she was credited by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) with generating the kind of attention that was needed to get that bill passed.

Now, in New Orleans, as Granny D spends 10 – 13 hours a day registering voters and urging us to actively participate in our own Democracy, she tells me:

“This is great work. Did you, as a child, hope that one day it would be in your hands to save the world? Then rejoice.”

Is it not indeed joyful to find yourself embarking on a life of great meaning?

Too many wonderful people have given their lives for this democracy, this dream entrusted to us today.

We have to find the time. We have to find the energy. We have to find the optimism to get up and defend our Bill of Rights and the rest of our Constitution.”

We must be more than “subjects” who can be assessed by scores or scantrons.

The quality of their lives and of our lives must be more important than TV talk or PowerPoint charts.

We need to resist what seems to be a trend in modern America to “numeralize” humanity into data and news polls.

Our social, religious, psychological and ethical identities are at stake.

Only by our individuality does democracy live. Only by our actions do we defend our freedom to be individual.

Learn the truth about candidates for yourselves.

Don’t let others take your right to vote from you by claiming your vote won’t count.

Read, listen and think. Look within for the voice you know is yours. Be the change you wish to see.

~ Paulette Swartzfager is an instructor of English