One Step: The Fight We’ve Been Given

For some reason, or maybe thousands of reasons, the actions of Louisiana governor Jeff Landry were just too much for me. He suspended an election. He stopped Congressional primary elections in his state from going forward, even though thousands had already voted. Why? So, he could redraw maps of election districts and prevent the interests of Black people, and Democrats, from being represented. He wants no more Black majority districts. White majority and Republican districts, yes. But Black, no. He stops an election solely to stop democracy. This is too much.

 

And there’s the GOP in Tennessee eliminating the one majority Black and Democratic House District in the state. They’re disenfranchising black voters and trying to give DT and his party an additional seat in the House. And it’s being done right in our face. Obvious. Blatant.

 

This racist, autocratic manipulation was made possible by the recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v Callais which further undermined the Voting Rights Act’s ability to counter discrimination in the construction of election districts. DT’s Republican Party is flat out doing all it can to stop a fair election in 2026 and forever afterwards. They fear us voters. They fear democracy. They fear they will lose badly unless they do everything possible to control the election outcome beforehand.

 

And I can’t help but think Landry’s action is just a practice run for November. It’s what DT is possibly planning if or when his party loses the House and Senate. During an interview with Reuters News Service back in January, he hinted at it out loud. According to Reuters: “He boasted that he had accomplished so much that ‘when you think about it, we shouldn’t even have an election.’” In the previous week, he briefly mentioned “cancelling” the 2026 elections to House Republicans.

 

Propublica published a report exposing several efforts DT is using to prepare to overturn the will of the voters in the midterms and dictate future election results. One notable example is he fired 75 federal officials in the DHS and DOJ tasked in 2020 and before that with safeguarding elections. Then he fired the professionals and replaced them with people loyal only to him, not the constitution. Ten of those appointees had worked to overturn the 2020 election. He also gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency which worked to counter false claims about the election being hacked.

 

I don’t know what will happen. No one does. All we have is right now, what we see and know in this moment, and our plans and intentions for the next. Now, we have a chance. There are millions in this with us. The No Kings marches mobilized 8 million people. 15-20 million people took part in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020. Other countries had mass demonstrations to fight for freedom and justice. In June 1987 there was the Democracy Struggle in South Korea; in 2004, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine protested election fraud, forced a re-vote, and ushered in democratic reforms.

 

John Pavlovitz wrote an article published on April 4th by the Good Men Project asking if Americans were too lazy to stop a dictatorship. Are we too distracted, too lost in phone screens, and running so much on autopilot we lack the patience to maintain a struggle, even one to save our own freedom? To save our nation and planet? Or so we might mistakenly think. Despite the world being on fire, for too many of us everything looks perfectly normal– pickleball courts are full, weekend parties in full swing. We need to look deeper at our world and ourselves in order to better discern what’s here and what’s possible 

 

I shuddered reading Pavlovitz’s article, with both fear and a sense of self-questioning, despite recently writing two blogs expressing similar warnings and analysis as his. Do I personally have the determination and courage, the attention span to continue the struggle?…

 

*To read the whole blog, please click on this link to The Good Men Project. Thanks.

The Movement Has Begun in Earnest⎼ And Just in Time, I Hope

I joined maybe millions of others in over 1400 cities and towns across this nation in the Hands Off rally and march on Saturday, April 5th. It was both deadly serious and wonderful; a reminder of the terror we face and an awakening of the heart⎼ an awakening of a commitment to act. And an act of caring for ourselves, others, and our physical and social worlds.

 

It was deadly serious for obvious reasons and maybe some not so obvious. After about 40 minutes of speeches and songs, the rally became a march, from the downtown commons to a Community Center. It stopped at a busy intersection, where it became a “honk & wave” demonstration. So many cars honked to join in and support us, 50 times more than those that gave us a thumbs down. Many cars even had signs supporting ours.

 

At that point, I was with a good friend, standing on a busy street corner crowded with cars on the roads, and protestors for several blocks filling both sides of the sidewalks. I leaned in, giving a thumbs up to a car, and my friend grabbed me by my coat and pulled me back. He said you never know when someone opposed to our message might come by and try to push you into the street in front of cars.

 

The obvious reason of the deadly seriousness of the march, of course, was DT, EM, and their attacks on every aspect of our democracy, almost every aspect of life. They’ve attacked our rights to free speech, due process, voting; to health care, in the process destroying federal agencies and the lives of workers who’ve dedicated themselves to looking out for our health. They’ve fired, attacked, and  threatened anyone who speaks out against them or shares the truth about DOGE, illegal deportations, etc.

 

They’ve attacked our children in so many ways, but one major attack was the dismantling of the Education Department, making it more difficult for our future generations to get food, get the support many need, and receive a good education. They’re attacking our future economic security, dismantling Social Security.

 

They’ve increased tensions throughout the world, undermined our international standing and our national security in countless ways, from firing thousands from the defense and state departments, destroying the Voice of [Democratic] America, which formerly had enabled people in nations with censored media to get reliable facts. They cut USAID, threatening our influence over third world countries. DT even threatened to invade our closest allies, Canada and Greenland.

 

DT’s tariffs not only threaten American businesses and the pocketbooks of most of us but have started trade wars with allies! The tariffs undermine both our national security and our personal incomes. One reason for the tariffs is to pay for tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Such cuts lead to an increase in the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands, and a loss of power for the majority. And it means the rest of us will have to cover more of the costs for government functions, for so many things, from repairing roads, to researching cures for illnesses, and protecting our food system from contamination and us from criminals and terrorists both foreign and domestic.

 

They’ve undermined our environment by dismantling whole sections of the EPA and transforming its mission from safeguarding the environment to increasing the huge profits corporations get from our natural resources, while destroying our heritage of forests, polluting land, air, and water. They’ve even removed bans on forever toxic chemicals.,,,

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.