We The People

I stood in the parking lot and watched them come.

Driving vans and jeeps, pickup trucks, BMW's, and old beaters held together with wire and duct tape.

They walked, rode bicycles, with their kids and grandkids, carrying briefcases and backpacks,

Wearing jeans and shirts emblazoned with the stars and stripes.

Some came for the first time,

Others hobbled in with a walker or on the arm of a family member.

But they came

Used a pen as their voice and joined men and women throughout the decades-

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt

woman suffragettes, presidents, dairy farmers, teachers,

Martin Luther King Jr, athletes, movie stars,

mothers and fathers, and college students.

By exercising their right to vote,

They became

We the people.