November 2020

Good morning, UNM Staff:

I am reminded today of one our greatest American heroes, Frederick Douglass, who championed universal suffrage his entire life, under the most challenging circumstances and with the most eloquent language. Douglass said:

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Policy 3415 grants employees up to two hours paid leave in order to vote (unless one’s work day begins after 9am or ends before 4pm). Please don’t take for granted this right for which too many have suffered – get out there and vote!