June 1, 2021
Today, more than 100 scholars who study democracy issued a letter warning that “our entire democracy is now at risk.” The letter explains that the new election laws in Republican-led states, passed with the justification that they will make elections safer, in fact are turning “several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.”
If we permit the breakdown of democracy, it will be a very long time before we can reverse the damage. As a nation spirals downward, the political scientists, sociologists, and government scholars explain, “violence and corruption typically flourish, and talent and wealth flee to more stable countries, undermining national prosperity. It is not just our venerated institutions and norms that are at risk—it is our future national standing, strength, and ability to compete globally.”
The scholars called for federal action to protect equal access to voting and to guarantee free and fair elections. Voting rights should not depend on which party runs the state legislature, and votes must be cast and counted equally, regardless of where a citizen lives. They back the reforms in the For the People Act, which protects the right to vote, ends partisan gerrymandering, and curbs the flood of money into elections.
They urged Congress “to do whatever is necessary—including suspending the filibuster—in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake.”
“History,” they wrote, “will judge what we do at this moment.”
But in Tulsa, Oklahoma, today, President Joe Biden noted that the events that transpired in the Greenwood district of that city 100 years ago today were written out of most histories. The Tulsa Massacre destroyed 35 blocks of the prosperous Greenwood neighborhood, wiping out 1100 homes and businesses and taking hundreds of Black lives, robbing Black families of generational wealth and the opportunities that come with it.
Biden pointed out that he was the first president to go to Tulsa to acknowledge what happened there on May 31 and June 1, 1921. But, he said, “We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened or doesn’t impact us today, because it does.” He drew a direct line from the terrorism at Greenwood to the terrorism in August 2017 at Charlottesville, Virginia, to the January 6 insurrection. Citing the intelligence community, he reminded listeners that “terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not Isis. Not al-Qaeda. White supremacists.”
Victims’ trauma endures, too, and it eventually demands a reckoning when “what many people hadn’t seen before, or simply refused to see, cannot be ignored any longer.” Today, Americans are recognizing “that for too long, we’ve allowed a narrowed, cramped view of the promise of this nation to fester, the view that America is a zero-sum game, where there’s only one winner. If you succeed, I fail. If you get ahead, I fall behind. If you get a job, I lose mine. And maybe worst of all, if I hold you down, I lift myself up. Instead of if you do well, we all do well.” Biden promised to invest in Black communities extensively to unlock creativity and innovation.
Then the president took on the elephant in the room: voting. On Saturday, Biden took a stand against the state voter suppression laws being passed in Republican-dominated legislatures that, as he said, attack “the sacred right to vote.” They are “part of an assault on democracy that we’ve seen far too often this year—and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans.” They are “wrong and un-American.”
Biden called on Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore the voting protections the Supreme Court stripped out of the 1965 Voting Rights Act with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision. He called on “all Americans, of every party and persuasion, to stand up for our democracy and to protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections.
In Tulsa today, Biden called the Republican efforts to restrict voting a “truly unprecedented assault on our democracy.” He urged voting rights groups to redouble their efforts to register and educate voters, and then he put pressure on Democratic senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), who continue to say they will not challenge the Republican use of the filibuster to stop passage of voting rights bills. Biden promised to fight “like heck with every tool in my disposal” to get the For the People and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act passed.
He has asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the effort. Today, she released a statement placing today’s fight for voting rights in the context of our history. “[M]any have worked—and many have died—to ensure that all Americans can cast a ballot and have their vote counted,” she said. “Today, that hard-won progress is under assault.” She promised to work with voting rights organizations, community organizations, the private sector, and Congress to strengthen voting rights.
“The work ahead of us is to make voting accessible to all American voters, and to make sure every vote is counted through a free, fair, and transparent process,” she said. “This is the work of democracy.”
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Notes:
https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/statements/statement-of-concern/
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/joe-biden-tulsa-race-massacre-anniversary-speech-transcript
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/01/statement-from-vice-president-kamala-harris-on-administrations-voting-rights-efforts/
As an American living in Australia, I can tell you that the comments in the scholarly letter regarding other countries attracting America's best and brightest (and those with money to invest) to emigrate is real. New Zealand is actively taking this course of action and why not? NZ (and Australia if they would wake up to the opportunity) can offer democratic stability, relatively strong economies, rational government intervention in society (look at the pandemic response), high-quality affordable nationalized health care, great public transportation, almost no gun crime, public investment in beautiful public spaces, spectacular natural areas ....the list goes on. It has been painful to watch the decline of America under the previous administration (he who shall go unnamed) and while as an optimist I have to believe the decline can be reversed, it will take a huge effort. It is a shame that is has gotten to this- my Australian friends (who universally admire America) can't believe what they see before their eyes. The world needs America as it sees itself - the old (and getting a bit worn) "beacon on a hill" metaphor. If that light goes out, where will the world look?
Thanks for what you do.
We forget how important the "bully pulpit" is. In my view Biden is handling it very well in his low key but unmistakably firm, non inflammatory manner. Now, it is up to the Democratic leadership in the House and in the Senate as to what to do next. I think it will be necessary to suspend the filibuster, a parliamentary procedure in the Senate used for over 100 years to restrict voting rights for all. I cannot imagine a more fitting reason to suspend it than to obtain voting rights for all who wish to vote and to assure an accurate vote count. Our democracy depends on the outcome of this fight. The current Republican Party has abandoned its support of democracy and with the exception of a few Republicans in the House and even fewer in the Senate and, of course, a great number of former Republican elected officials, cannot be trusted as a partner in the venture of obtaining voting rights for all. It is wonderful that Biden has given the important work of coordinating the fight for equal voting rights to the Vice President. This is a powerful statement on his part. While I am at it, I want to say how right it is that Biden is not touching any of the delusional material coming from the ex President and from the Republican base. In treating delusional patients, psychiatrists learn early on not to directly challenge the person with the delusion, nor do they agree about the delusional idea, but they patiently work with those around the patient to produce a healing atmosphere and wait until the delusional person gradually comes into their right mind.