Like everyone else in the United States, poet Nikki Giovanni is thinking about the upcoming election—and she seems to have been watching the Democratic debates as well. “I don’t care who you vote for,” she told the audience at an event honoring W.E.B. Du Bois at Clark Atlanta University on Sunday.  “Just vote, because there’s not a person on that [debate] stage who hasn’t lied or done something. They all did something…against us.”

Noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement, Giovanni is best known for a poem in her first book called “Nikki-Rosa,” a remembrance of growing up black outside Cincinnati. She is also the author of numerous books for children, including I Am Loved (2018) and Hip Hop Speaks to Children (2008). Her latest poem, which she read at the event, is a passionate call to action directed to the African American community. “We must make sure they can’t silence us,” she told the crowd.

Recalling one of her heroines, the voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, she said, “I made a promise to myself, that if I am even sort of alive, I will vote. Fannie Lou Hamer took a hell of a beating so I could vote, and so I will…and everyone else should, too.”

Here’s an excerpt from “Vote,” printed in full at the Washington Informer:

… I am a citizen

I should be able to vote from prison

I should be able to vote from the battlefield

I should be able to vote when I get my driver’s license

I should be able to vote when can I purchase a gun

When I’m in the hospital

Or the old folk’s home

Or if I need a ride to the polling place

I am a citizen

I must be able to vote.

Marion Winik is the author of The Big Book of the Dead and a regular contributor to Kirkus, the Washington Post, and other publications.