October 12th. Election Day.

Early voting in Chicago starts today. Well. Not really. You can do it, but only at three locations in the City.

Tomorrow I can vote at the local library. And I will.

As a young man I rarely voted. In those days, the voting age was 21. Lyndon Johnson taught me that voting for a person because they would do what they promised was a dumb idea. That was in 1964, before I was old enough to actually walk into a voting booth.

By 1968 the uselessness of voting became even more clear to me. The choices for president were Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. I may have been young and crazy. But I wasn’t stupid.

I voted in the streets.

I think the first election I actually voted in was the Chicago mayor’s race between Jane Byrne and Michael Bilandic after the death of Richard Daley the elder. The people of Chicago rose up, almost spontaneously, and ignored the local ward bosses to toss out the Machine. I wasn’t about to be left out of that one. As I expected, Byrne failed to meet our expectations.

But no matter. She got tossed the next time.

Then there was Harold Washington. Not only did I vote with enthusiasm. I knocked on doors. I carried a voter registration sheet. I marked pluses and minuses. We got out our votes on election day. We even carried my precinct for Harold. It’s an achievement I’m most proud of to this day.

For five years as Mayor of Chicago he never disappointed me. He took on the enemies of social justice in the city council with energy and humor. He rallied his troops like a war-time general, only the troops were us. We sat in rally after rally in the hundred-year old Quinn Chapel on the near south side, a station on the underground railroad in the days of slavery, while Harold would laugh and say, “I am not Monty Hall and this is not Let’s Make a Deal!” And the crowd would roar and the old wood church would tremble.

If only a certain self-proclaimed progressive leader from Chicago would speak those words today.

But I will vote tomorrow.

The Democrats are running on the slogan, “Well, we’re not as crazy as they are.” It won’t save them.

But I will vote. I don’t want to see a governor of Illinois who thinks the earth is 10,000 years old and wants that taught in public schools.

I’ll vote for a local Green Party candidate who is running for state legislator.

I’ll vote for Luis Gutierrez because I think he makes a better congressman than he would a mayor.

All the candidates I’m voting for should know:

I’m voting to end the wars.

I’m voting because the largest sector of laid off workers in the last quarter were teachers.

I’m voting against the polices of Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Ron Huberman, Cory Booker and all those who want to scapegoat public school teachers and public schools.

In spite of the IEA’s recommendation, I’m voting for David Miller for comptroller. I don’t think a guy who championed school funding and HB 174 should be stabbed in the back by our union. Even if I don’t know what a comptroller actually does.

I’m voting for some of the good things done under the Obama administration even if though they’re not nearly enough.

I’m voting against John Boehner.

And the rise in homophobic violence.

I’m voting because the FBI raided the home of my neighbors last week who are peace and union organizers.

I’m voting against the increase in poverty, overall and particularly among African-Americans and other people of color.

I’m voting for a library in Pilsen and a mosque in lower Manhattan.

There’s nobody on the ballot that is saying these things. So I have to say it so you will know.

Oh, Harold. Where is he on an election day when when we need him?