I'll ignore your self-victimization about your own ignorance and just go after the voting thing.

Again, women's suffrage is the example that shows you're wrong. They literally couldn't vote and still got what they needed because of what you call "activism". Except it was specifically radical activism. They spent decades lobbying politicians and letter writing and protesting acceptably and it go them nowhere. They broke the law, they ended up prison, they went on hunger strikes, they surrounded the white house. They got the ballot. Not by voting. By fighting.

So when we look at the civil rights movement, we see that Nixon was ALSO forced to concede policy positions and abandon his conservative positions. So clearly it's not the case that voting in Ds is the only way. Meanwhile, FDR the democrat refused any structural civil rights concessions and refused to entertain a federal anti-lynching bill and JFK the Democrat also avoided making any major concessions arguing that it would harm the Democrats in the South.

So as we see, the party in charge doesn't fucking matter, what matters is how forcefully you can make your case. This is known as "interest convergence". Until you can make meeting your demands less risky than ignoring your demands, nothing will happen. Republican and Democrat alike work this way. You have to force them.