Stop Giving Away Your Power — Every Vote Still Matters

By David LaGuerre

A veteran’s message to his community: We marched for these rights. Don’t you dare surrender them.

Let me talk to you for a minute. Not as a politician. Not as a pundit. Just one person being straight with you.

A lot of people call me an activist. I don’t see it that way. I’m just a man who wants to live the American dream. A comfortable life. The ability to take care of my family. The chance to help the people around me do the same. I believe every single person deserves to live with dignity. That’s not a radical idea. That’s a human one.

But I have to be honest with you. That dream, the one our parents believed in, the one people marched and bled for, is slipping through our fingers. And it’s not slipping just because of crooked politicians or a broken system.

It’s slipping because too many of us have stopped showing up.

I Hear You. But I Need You to Hear Me Too.

I know what some of you are thinking right now.

“The system is rigged. It doesn’t matter who I vote for. They all say the same things and do the same things once they get into office. Why should I even bother?”

I hear you. I genuinely do. I’ve watched people do everything right, follow the rules, work hard, believe in candidates who made beautiful promises, only to feel let down when nothing changed. That kind of disappointment hardens a person. It makes silence feel like the only honest response left.

But your silence is not a protest. It is a surrender.

When you stay home, power doesn’t disappear. It doesn’t wait patiently for you to come back. It moves, directly into the hands of people who may not look like you, think like you, or care about what happens to you and your children.

And those people? They showed up.

42 Votes. Let That Sink In.

I want to tell you about a local school board election that happened not too long ago right here in our community.

A local business owner, well-resourced and well-connected, ran against a young woman who didn’t have his money or his network. But she had something he didn’t. She understood this community. She knew the children in this district. She knew the struggles everyday families face because she had lived them herself.

She lost by 42 votes.

Forty. Two. Votes.

Sit with that number for a second. One neighborhood. One church congregation. One group of parents who decided to make some phone calls and give someone a ride to the polls. Any one of those things could have changed the entire outcome.

How many people stayed home that day thinking their vote didn’t matter? How many scrolled past the election notice on their phone and kept going? How many said “it’s just a school board” without realizing that school boards control what your child learns, who teaches them, how money gets spent, and what kind of future they’re being prepared for?

That is what apathy costs us. Forty-two votes.

They Are Watching Whether You Show Up

Here’s something that political insiders know but rarely say out loud.

When you don’t show up, they stop working for you.

It is not right. It is not fair. But it is the cold reality of how political power works. When elected officials see that certain communities consistently skip elections, skip town halls, and skip every opportunity to be heard, the message they receive is loud and clear. These people are not a priority.

So they focus their energy on the people who do show up. The ones who come to council meetings and ask uncomfortable questions. The ones who arrive with neighbors and friends and refuse to be brushed aside. The ones who make their presence impossible to ignore.

My family makes it a point to attend local events, community meetings, and public forums. And every single time, I notice the same thing. It is always the same people in the room. The same small group of committed citizens doing the work that an entire community should be sharing together.

That has to change. And it starts with you.

You Don’t Have to Run for Office. Just Show Up.

I am not asking you to become a community organizer or run for city council, though if that calling is inside you, please answer it. What I am asking for is much simpler than that.

Civic engagement is not just about casting a ballot every four years. Real community power gets built in the spaces between elections:

• Go to a city council or town hall meeting

• Attend your school board sessions

• Call or write your local representative, because yes, they do read those

• Bring a friend to the polls who was not planning to go

• Talk to your kids about why any of this matters

That last one is especially important. The habits we build in our children today become the civic culture of tomorrow. If they grow up watching us disengage, they will disengage. If they grow up watching us show up, they will show up.

Teach them that their voice matters. Because it does.

A Direct Message to My People

Now I need to speak plainly, specifically to my community and every person of color reading these words.

I am a Black man in my 60s. A military veteran. I have experienced and witnessed things that most people will never have to deal with in their lifetime. I have earned the right to say this, and I am saying it with love.

Stop giving away your power.

I am tired of hearing people complain about elected officials who are not delivering for us, officials that we helped put into office, either through our votes or through our silence on Election Day. Both are choices. And both carry consequences.

We have more reasons than almost anyone to be deeply engaged in this process. Our schools, our neighborhoods, our children, our safety, all of it is shaped by decisions made in local government buildings that most of us have never walked into.

And yet we stay home.

Meanwhile the people making those decisions are listening to whoever bothers to walk through the door.

We Marched for This. Don’t Let It Slip Away.

I was alive when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I lived through the era when civil rights was not a chapter in a history book. It was the evening news. I watched Black Americans march across bridges, face fire hoses, sit in jail cells, and give their lives for one basic right.

The right to be heard. The right to participate. The right to vote.

People gave everything for those rights. Everything.

And now, in 2026, too many of us are handing them back without a fight. Not because anyone forced us. Not at gunpoint. But because we convinced ourselves it was not worth the effort.

That is not just a political failure. That is a betrayal of everyone who came before us.

The giants of the Civil Rights Movement did not march so that we could stay home on Election Day. They did not suffer so we could scroll past a local election notice and keep moving. They fought so that our voices would count.

Our voices only count when we use them.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Midterms Are Here. So Which One Are You?

With the midterm elections coming up, I want to ask you one direct question.

Are you going to be a sheep and stay home? Or are you going to be that one vote?

Because here is what most people forget about that one vote. It does not stay one vote. It becomes two when you bring a friend. It becomes ten when that friend tells their family. It becomes a hundred when that family reaches out to their neighbors. It grows into thousands, even millions, when people who never cared before decide that this time, they will.

You have read the polls. You know what is at stake. You feel it.

The chance to make real change is sitting right in front of you. The question is whether you are going to take it.

Your Action Plan Starts Right Now

Do not let this be another article you read, nod at, and forget about. Take at least one of these steps before this week is over:

1. Confirm your voter registration at vote.org

2. Find your midterm election date and put it in your phone right now

3. Attend one local government meeting in the next 30 days

4. Have a real conversation with three people about why showing up matters

5. Make a plan to get to the polls and take someone with you who was not planning to go

The American dream is not handed to anyone. It is built together, in community, through participation and persistence.

The power to shape your life, your neighborhood, your children’s future, and this country already belongs to you.

It always has.

Do not give it away.

What is your plan for the midterms? Drop a comment below and share this post with someone who needs to read it today.