The People Have Spoken
"That is why I love America. We always have a path to make it better." Raphael Warnock's time is now.
Coincidentally, on the same day insurrectionists, egged on by right wing media, members of Congress, seditious service members as high up as generals and the former occupant of the White House, stormed our nation’s capitol in an attempt to establish a dictatorship, two dark horse senate candidates in the state of Georgia woke up to discover they’d been elected to office thereby cementing Democratic control over every branch of government with the exception of the judicial branch.
It was a historic victory as the state of Georgia flipped to blue in the 2020 national side of the elections. It was historic, not because Georgians had elected a pair of Democrats. It was historic because they had elected, following historic voter turnouts, not only in the general election, but in the runoff elections, their first African-American senator as well as their first Jewish senator. In the end, both Senate elections and the presidential vote went in favor of the Democrats. Georgia is not typically seen as one of the ‘swing’ states political pundits breathlessly parry over.
Thanks to tireless plotting, planning, strategizing, organizing and mobilizing - in the words of Killer Mike - by organizations like Fair Fight and churches like Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church Georgia voters came out in force to exercise their rights.
The celebration of those historic Georgia elections were pre-empted by the madness that ensued on the 6th of January. Neither Raphael Warnock or Jon Ossoff were allowed much of an opportunity to bask in their victories.
This week as the Senate debated the merits of the For the People Act (S.1) Senator Warnock made the first speech of his career on the Senate floor. Being a pastor as well as a senator, being a pastor walking in the footsteps of Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as Sr., who were both pastors at Ebenezer Baptist Church, being a man accustomed to soaring oratory, it is said freshman Senator Warnock knocked his first speech out of the park. It should not have been a surprise. Ministers tend to have a way with words and black ministers from churches that have a record of speaking out about injustice are going to be passionate and prepared.
I highly recommend listening to the full 20 minute maiden speech of GA Senator Raphael Warnock.
Voting rights may be the single biggest issue confronting Americans. At the same time, voting rights may be the easiest route we have to balancing the scales of justice for all of our citizens. Passing the For the People Act and strengthening the Voting Rights Act could be the path of least resistance to repairing generations of inequity.
In his speech, Senator Warnock recounts how the very seat he sits in was once occupied by a white Georgian senator who was a segregationist that once wrote down on a slip of paper how he would see to preventing Negroes from going to the polls - “pistols”.
Talking about his mom, the Reverend Senator Warnock said,
But because this is America, the 82 year old hands who once picked somebody else’s cotton went to the polls in January to pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.
He goes on.
Ours is a land where possibility is born of democracy. A vote. A voice. A chance. To help determine the direction of the country and one’s own destiny within it.
A possibility born of democracy that’s why this past November and January my mom and other citizens of Georgia grabbed hold of that possibility and turned out in record numbers - 5 million in November. 4.4 million in January. Far more than ever in our state’s history.
Turn out for a typical runoff doubled! And the people of Georgia sent their first African American senator, and first Jewish senator. . . my brother Jon Ossoff. . . to these hallowed halls.
It is unfortunate the party of right wing ideologues, instead of seeking solutions, bipartisan compromise and comity, have decided their course of action will be to make voting more difficult, squander resources looking for non-existent fraud and inviting foreign adversaries to have their way with our election system. In the next part of Senator Warnock’s speech - the crux - he addresses this issue head on by saying you would think the lesson to have been learned by conservatives would be to adjust their agenda, or to adjust their message. But what they have chosen to do instead is to “change the rules”.
The irony now is that a relic of the old Jim Crow era (because hasn’t it become clear Jim Crow never really went away?) - the filibuster - may be what stands between realizing the dream of civil rights activists and legislators who are no longer with us like John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Elijah Cummings. Warnock had this to say about that,
I stand before you saying that this issue — access to voting and preempting politicians’ efforts to restrict voting — is so fundamental to our democracy that it is too important to be held hostage by a Senate rule, especially one historically used to restrict the expansion of basic rights. It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in our society.
The people have spoken.
Their voices need to be heard.
A more perfect union means a more perfect democracy. Though we may not have ever had a true democracy, it is clear which side seeks to improve upon our current status and which side wishes to overturn the cart and usher in darker days.
It is reassuring to see someone like Raphael Warnock speak so eloquently in the halls of power while taking on the mantle of all of those who came before him.
The people have a spokesman.
As a reminder, here are the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election results EVEN AFTER the full frontal assault on the Capitol Building. I was relieved - and shocked - to see there were no Washington State legislators in that group.
In other words, those are the 147 Republicans who wished to install a dictatorship in America.
As another reminder, virtually no Republican legislator on the national stage has spoken against the Big Lie that the election was stolen.
No explanation or commentary necessary.
Also, something lighthearted.
