Today, the Department of Homeland Security announced they are designating September 25 as national “If You See Something, Say Something” awareness day.

I guess they forgot that today is national voter registration day.

According to the website, the campaign is intended to “empower and educate” the public on reporting “suspicious activity.” The website states that “by designating a day to campaign, the Department (DHS) hopes to highlight the importance of suspicious activity reporting.”

As stated before, today is national voter registration day, which should be one of the most important days of the year for our country. The day is literally designed to remind all those who can vote to exercise one of their most valuable privilege in this country. A privilege many people have died or spent their entire lives trying to obtain.

So why is it that our federal government is trying to undermine this important day with a campaign focused on “reporting suspicious activity” and not supporting the campaign that aims to get the most Americans possible to register to vote?

Campaigns like these is what is fueling racist -discriminatory people like “Barbeque Becky”,  the white woman who called the cops on a group of black people barbecuing in a park in Oakland, California. This campaign is fueling people like Permit Patty, the white woman who called the police on a little black girl for selling water on the street without a permit.

Campaigns like these are fueling people like the white New York lawyer that threatened to call ICE on two women just for speaking spanish.

It is campaigns like these that are designed to keep our country divided and focused on “looking for suspicious activities” and distracted from the necessity of our people to make their voices heard through their vote this vital election season.

Campaigns like these are just another way to suppress voters.

As we near election day, our focus should be on helping our community make their voices heard at the polls and not fall under the discriminatory false sense of security that DHS wants to portray.

This is one of the most important midterm elections in recent history, and we can’t allow for DHS or people with the “Barbeque Becky” mentality to suppress our right to vote.