Annual Youth Initative Contest

Voting Decisions: What Matters To You

High School Winner - First Place

A Matter of Us

Grant Kels

I need not look far
To know what matters to me.

It's in everything I see.
My dad's brown boots
- a testament to duty.
My mom's blue scrubs
- a symbol of care.

For this home we all share.

One person, one vote.
A concept so simple
Yet the stuff of revolutions
And the dream of generations.

May we not forsake them.

This treasured freedom
Is our sacred obligation
To honor and preserve,
While also to strengthen.

The promise of our nation.

Was not a perfect union
But a journey to perfect it
So that with each mounting crisis
We could renew our mission.

To realizing the proposition.

That self-evident truths
Are hard-won nonetheless
This republic we keep
Demands our attention.

Only the governed can give it direction.

That a mighty power
Can yet be so fragile
Is the gift of those who came before
And the task of we who come after.

To write the next chapter.

Of our common endeavor.
Decide: let us resolve to go there together.