The American midterm elections are on November 6th. Everyone is on edge, for good reason. This election is the arguably the most important in a century, honestly. It pains me that so many people can’t see that – we are on the precipice of something much, much worse, and it’s already incredibly terrible right now. But if we don’t take back the House and Senate, it really will be game over. I don’t want to hear any bulls–t about this or that Democrat being an imperfect candidate, or that so-and-so is canceled because he or she did one thing you didn’t like. Just vote. Vote as if your life depends on it, because it literally does depend on it.

So… I think what I’d like to do is highlight some positive celebrity-voting and celebrity-activism stories from here until Election Day. Janelle Monae is a queer African-American woman who votes, and talks about why voting means so much to her. She spoke to People:

“I will absolutely be voting Nov. 6th. It’s something that was instilled in me. My grandmother was a sharecropper. She served food in the county jail for 25 years. She picked cotton, shared one pair of shoes with her 14 brothers and sisters in Aberdeen, Mississippi. Then she migrated to Kansas City, Kansas. And she did not have the right to vote.”

When Monáe was of age, “She made me promise to her that anytime I had the opportunity to vote, that I would,” she says. “So, even though all the candidates are not perfect, in honor of my grandmother, I take my butt to the polls.”

“I do care about the rights of the LGBTQI community that I’m a part of, I do care about women’s rights, I’m a woman, I do care about black folks, minority rights, I’m a black person living in America. There are a lot of things that I care about, and so, I try to figure out ways in my shows to use my platform to support certain folks. I want to make sure that even in this political climate, that we are taking into consideration, as they’re making new laws, as folks are running for office, like who cares about those things that I care about.”

[From People]

For the past few election cycles in particular, black women voters have saved a lot of Democrats on the edge – black women come out in droves to vote in every election, and their demographic participation rate is usually above 90% (as in, more than 90% of eligible black women actually vote). The reason for the high participation rate is what Janelle describes – they know their own family history, they had mothers or grandmothers or great-grandmothers who couldn’t vote because of Jim Crow laws. And because they’ve understood for a long time that their lives depend on the country’s leadership.

Photos courtesy of WENN.