The Final Stretch: A Call to Action

How fortunate we are to be activists at a time when the future of America is in the voters' hands.

In the week before Election Day, we face extraordinary opportunities to ensure a future in which social justice, peace, and human rights are paramount. Voting on November 4 is crucial, and I know you will do that. But there is more. We must work to ensure that every eligible voter can vote, that every vote is counted, and that every voter is an educated voter.

This election isn’t just about who sits in the Oval Office or on Capitol Hill. It's about who nominates our next Supreme Court justices and therefore sets the balance of the Court for generations. It's about who determines what is funded and what is not and therefore who goes without or who gets more. It’s about who determines how equality and freedom are defined and protected and therefore whether we retain our rights to make deeply personal decisions. And it's about what is tolerated as religious freedom and what is intolerable as religious discrimination and whether one religious view is permitted to trump others.

We must ensure that our friends, families, and allies in states with ballot initiatives understand just how much is at stake, like giving a fertilized egg the rights of a person in Colorado, banning gay marriage in California and Florida, ending affirmative action with so-called "Civil Rights Initiatives" in Colorado and Nebraska, or implementing an abortion ban in South Dakota, as well as progressive efforts, like funding children’s health care in Montana.

Already, NCJW has enfranchised and empowered so many with our Promote the Vote, Protect the Vote initiative, working to keep egregious initiatives off our ballots -- like those funding religious activities with public funds or banning stem cell research or abortion -- speaking out in town hall meetings, registering voters, hosting standing-room-only candidate debates, and working with state commissions for women’s equality and other community-based groups to educate and register voters.

The civic and religious liberties we enjoy make voting a necessity -- so that every American can continue to enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms that have allowed us to flourish.

So please, embrace this opportunity to define the future of America.

Nancy Ratzan

NCJW President