OK, y’all. It’s time for real talk.
I see more and more folks worried about “What if Joe Biden loses? What are we going to do?”
I say, “The same thing we do if Joe Biden wins.”
Let me tell you a story…
THE POWER OF WOMEN: Black Women saved the Biden campaign.
Fight me!
Black Women are the backbone of the Democratic Party. With ongoing racial unrest over the murder of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor and so many others, and global embrace of the Black Lives Matter Movement. It was the primary reason Biden vetted so many accomplished black women in his search for a Vice President and chose Senator Harris as his running mate.
These are all well-documented facts.
Women are the changing face of American politics, are the majority of the electorate, and have the collective power to take down the “Pussygrabber” and his supporters.
The fact of the matter is Women & LGBTQ Candidates are positioned to make history across the ballot in 2020 and shatter the records set in the 2018 mid-terms.
More are running for Congress than ever before, including 266 Women of Color. However, these are not merely cracks in the glass ceiling at the national level, it’s happening in statehouses, city halls, and school boards across the country.
This is a very hopeful sign of Progressive Change. We, as an electorate of free people, can NEVER be as complacent as we were when Barack Obama was elected.
The fact of the matter is, if the Biden/Harris ticket is successful, that’s not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning. Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? Shame on me.
Win or lose at the top of the ballot in November, if we wish to protect what little franchise we enjoy as American citizens in this fragile Republic, we can’t go back to business as usual.
If we truly believe that #BlackLivesMatter:
- We have no choice but to stay in the streets, stay politically active, and stay informed. Power only ever ceded to power.
- We must be done with meekly asking permission. All must become comfortable with making demands.
- We must hold the line, hold fast, hold strong.
- In a word? YIBAMBE!
Trump may go or stay. We refuse to be held hostage to him and his cronies. “TRUMPISM”: The mindset and people that got his fascist ass elected in the first place ain’t going NOWHERE on November 4th.
The patriarchal, apartheid oligarchy that is the root of America’s problems and keeps us from being a truly great nation, will STILL exist on November 4th.
Fundamentally, I believe knowing your next-door neighbor’s name is far more important and impactful in the long run than the name of the President or his political party.
- Do you know your neighbors?
- What issues concern them most?
- Who’s on your School board?
- What’s the Comptrollers Job?
- What policy platforms do your Mayor, Police Chief & State Senators espouse?
What good is democracy you aren’t involved in nor understand?
◊♦◊
SAY HER NAME
On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, our Constitution was adopted.
Americans of all colors and creeds gathered on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to await news of the government our founding fathers had crafted.
As this story goes, some nameless person asked Benjamin Franklin,
What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?’
Franklin replied,
A republic, if you can keep it.
It’s OUR responsibility to keep it. Not Joe Biden’s nor Kamala Harris’
The important and overlooked element of the story was: Who asked Franklin the question that sparked his response?
Her name was Elizabeth Powell, a woman of the founding era of our nation, that has been all but erased from American history.
Elizabeth Powell’s erasure not only creates a founding-era political history artificially devoid of women, but it also makes it harder to imagine contemporary women such as Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton before her, in seats of power.
Ms. Powell’s omission from this well-known story is not accidental. This is by design.
There are no accidents, only precedents.
Elizabeth Powell’s omission gives credence to the Patriarchal slant of American History and underlines the statement that “Representation Matters” more now than any time before in history.
No matter who is President, we’ve got a lot of work to do.
Women, like Powell, shut out as they were from institutional politics, used their homes and domestic spaces, which were the few places they could freely engage in political discussion — and lead conversations while hosting important politicians of the day.
They were the first Americans to “Think globally & act locally.” Arguably “Influencers” hundreds of years before Instagram.
They kept themselves well informed because knowledge is the currency of political activism.
Women like Ms. Powell were pro-active agents of change and they eventually became influential patriots in their own right. But I’ll bet you haven’t thought about them until right now.
They shaped the expectations and the history of future women in politics. How do YOU choose to defend and enrich our fragile participatory democracy? It’s too important a task to outsource or ignore.
Much to our chagrin, we did that during Barack Obama’s Presidency and here we find ourselves on the dangerous precipice of tyranny.
If our democracy is to continue and grow to encompass ALL Americans?
If this American Experiment is to survive in any recognizable fashion?
It’s up to “We The People”.
Either we rise to the occasion and become the heroes we’ve been waiting for, or we kneel before Trump.
This choice is no choice at all.
***
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