The Times-Independent

Are you woke?

Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport


The history of words and their meaning is a curious thing. Not long ago, the dictionary defined the word woke as the “past tense of wake,” which meant “to be or remain awake,” and the meaning of awake, as “to cease sleeping or become active again.”

Carey Dabney

Now the word woke is used in a partisan political sense to divide people into “woke” tribes, and I don’t know, “unwoke” tribes, so they know how to vote in local, state and national elections without ever having to do the hard work demanded of living in a democracy.

Being woke is now defined as “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” The word is being used by politicians to disparage certain populations. These politicians also want you to believe that being “woke” is something that just recently happened and therefore is un-American.

Being woke is not un-American unless you think ensuring women have the same rights as a man is un-American. Being woke is not un-American unless you think African Americans don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else; or for that matter, Native Americans and every other population that doesn’t look exactly like the Founding Fathers.

To which I would remind everyone that being woke in its political sense is not new.

The Founding Fathers wrote in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

They also wrote that, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This was pretty woke stuff in its day and is the foundation for the past 200 plus years of America’s journey towards ensuring that every American citizen shares in the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” along with the responsibility to vote and be part of the democratic process.

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Segrott/Wikimedia Commons

However, when the Constitution was written in 1787 it did not delineate who was eligible to vote. This was left to the individual states. It would take a Civil War and several constitutional amendments (13th, 14th, 15th and the 19th) before the right to vote for all adult U.S. citizens was guaranteed by the Constitution.

The League of Women Voters was officially founded in 1920, just six months before the 19th amendment was ratified and women won the right to vote. Formed by the suffragists of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the League began as a “mighty political experiment” designed to help 20 million women carry out their new responsibilities as voters. At the first League convention in 1920, participants voted for 69 separate items as statements of principle and recommendations for legislation which were grouped in subject areas that included:

Child welfare

Education

Independent citizenship for married women

The home and high prices

Women in gainful occupations Public health

A little over 100 years ago, this agenda was considered too extreme by those who didn’t want women to have any rights, including the right to vote. One hundred years later, we are still fighting for many of the same things.

Any politician who tells you that being woke is un-American doesn’t understand the history of this country and without that knowledge, doesn’t have a clue how to govern in a democratic system where the words “We the People” declare that the Constitution derives its power not from a king or a Congress, or a dictator, or a group of oligarchs, or a cult leader, or the military, but from the people themselves.

This concept of popular sovereignty and the ability to make amendments to the Constitution was totally woke for its time and is the foundation upon which the entire Constitution, and the future of our democracy, depends.

Stay woke.

Carey Dabney writes for the LWV of Southeast Utah.