The Lilith Blog

September 14, 2020 by Rachel Fadem

Lilith Votes: How I’m Feeling (Spoiler: Not Great!) as a First-Time Feminist Voter

August 18th marked the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave some women–white women–the hard-won right to vote in the United States, and I feel disappointed.

As a first-time voter, radical feminist, and survivor of sexual assault, I’d anticipated that this election would be more hopeful than it is. In 2016 I felt the possibility that women would have a more significant say in government and that our voices would be heard. Hillary Clinton was predicted to win the election, which would have been an historic validation. But Donald Trump became president, and the past four years have been even worse than anticipated. From the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the defunding of Planned Parenthood, women’s voices and bodies are being left in the dust.

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The Lilith Blog

September 11, 2020 by Arielle Silver-Willner

Lilith Votes: The Truth about Voter Suppression

During my first year of college, I registered to vote at a picnic table in front of the Student Center. The student running the event, a volunteer for the Bernie Sanders campaign, shared my excitement about voting in our first-ever election for a candidate that we “actually liked.” I filled out the registration form carefully, verified that I would be 18 before the 2016 Democratic primary, and slipped the paper into an official-looking box. 

I grew up in New York, but had decided to register locally in Connecticut so that I could vote in person. I envisioned myself as a “civically engaged youth,” doing my part to push our country further toward justice.

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