Journal of the Plague Years

July 2, 2021

     On the last day of the term, the Supreme Court issued two decisions, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U.S. ___(2021) and Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, 594 U.S.___ (2021), which together spell the end of American democracy.  This may sound hyperbolic, but even a cursory reading of these decisions leads to that conclusion.  In Brnovich, the Court finished the job that it started in Shelby Cty. v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529, and eviscerated the Voting Rights Act.

     Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, joined by the five other members of the Court’s ultra-conservative block, thoroughly rewrote the standards of Section 2 to turn them on their head.  In Alito’s radical view, statutes “with a disproportionate impact on racial minorities are not inherently unlawful,” (Source:  “How Unprecedented Is the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act Ruling?” by Mark Joseph Stern, Slate.com, 7/1/21).

     Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent shows just how much of a radical departure the majority’s decision represents. Justice Kagan exhaustively details how the majority both reinterpreted the plain meaning of the statute, and arrogated legislative power for the Court in a manner that arguably violates the separation of powers.  She notes that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “applies to any voting rule, of any kind.  The provision prohibits not just the denial, but also the abridgment of a citizen’s voting rights on account of race,” (Source:  Brnovich, dissent of Kagan, J.).

   Justice Kagan points out that in drafting Section 2  Congress explicitly focused on the effect, rather than the intent, of a given voting rule, because of the difficulty of demonstrating discriminatory intent.  As we know, the century of voter suppression that followed the enactment of the 15th Amendment relied on “facially neutral” poll taxes and literacy tests, (backed up by violent repression).  This disenfranchisement scheme was so effective that “by 1965, only 27% of black Georgians, 19% of black Alabamans and 7% …of black Mississippians were registered to vote,” (Source: ibid).  This is the past to which the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision condemns us to return.

      While the Brnovich decision will be an accelerant for Republican efforts to incinerate voting rights, yesterday’s companion decision in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, 594 U.S. ___ (2021) makes it easier for monied forces to hide their disproportionate influence on public debate.  In Bonta, the Court held that California’s law requiring nonprofits to disclose their donors violated the donors freedom of association rights under the First Amendment, on the theory that the mere threat of disclosure might deter people from donating to causes of their choice.  Chief Justice Roberts issued a sweeping ruling even though the state keeps donors’ names confidential and even though no individual donor had actually alleged that they were deterred.

       In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor pointed out that this decision “marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bullseye,” which regulated entities can evade by citing vague “First Amendment ‘privacy concerns,’” (Source:  Bonta, dissent of Sotomayor, J.).  The majority’s departure from decades of Supreme Court precedent will facilitate the wholesale purchase of our government enterprise by dark money forces.

     The Court may cloak its sophistry in elegant phrases, but it is doing as much violence to our Constitutional order as the insurrectionists did on January 6th.  Like their Republican counterparts in Congress, the Supreme Court majority has gone all in on minority rule.  If the Democrats don’t get rid of the filibuster, we will be forced to conclude that they have too.

June 11 , 2021

     Democracy is on a collision course with itself.  It is at the mercy of an elected body of people, half of whom are actively working to dismantle it and half of whom are so concerned with slavish adherence to tradition that they are willing to sacrifice the entire 245 year experiment in self-governance on the altar of outmoded procedure.

     On Sunday, Joe Manchin published a garbled op-ed in The West Virginia Gazette trumpeting his opposition to the For the People Act.  Since Mondaire Jones dispatched with Manchin’s specious arguments here, as did Baltimore Sun columnist Peter Jensen here, there’s no need to repeat them.  Manchin’s opposition is frustrating, but hardly surprising.  He is a Democratic Senator from a state that voted 2-1 for Trump.  Whether his racist indifference to the voting rights of Black people is performative or bone deep really doesn’t matter.  The result is the same.

      Our focus should be on the 49 other Democratic senators and the Democratic President, who owe their majority and their presence in office to the Herculean efforts of BIPOC organizers who mobilized voters of color to deliver the margin of victory in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia (twice!).

     Even if elected Democrats believe (mistakenly) that the voting rights of Black, Brown, Asian and Indigenous Americans are an afterthought, their own self-interest should motivate them to pull out all the stops to protect voting rights.  At last count, 14 states have already enacted a suite of harsh voter suppression laws aimed squarely at BIPOC citizens and 18 more states have similar legislation tee’d up, (Source: “Voting Laws Roundup:  May 2021,” BrennanCtr.org, 5/28/21).  Without the support of people of color Democrats will not win.  They should be fighting like hell to protect voting rights, if only to keep their cushy government jobs.

      Instead, in the wake of Manchin’s ridiculous salvo we hear crickets from President Biden, while civil rights leaders are forced to go and plead with Manchin to respect the Constitutional rights of Black people, (Source:  “Sen. Manchin steadfast in opposition to voting rights bill after meeting with civil rights leaders,” by Mike DeBonis, Amy Gardner and Sean Sullivan, The Washington Post, 6/8/21).   Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s tepid response was to promise to bring the bill to the floor this month, with no hint of a strategy for passage and no articulation of the critical urgency of protecting democracy.

      With friends like these, it is easy to fall prey to despair.  We can’t help but feel that we are doomed to an inexorable slide into autocracy.  We fear that it will be ushered along by hapless handmaidens too insulated from the impact of their ineptitude to act until it’s too late, but we are not powerless.  As Ezra Levin of Indivisible reminds us, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had to overcome a 54 day filibuster.  If we want our senators to step up and protect democracy, we need to remind them who they work for.  We will need to make some noise and make them uncomfortable.  Summer is here.  It’s time to hit the streets.  Democracy depends on it.

#Indivisible.org

     We have long said that knowledge is power, but the ability to obscure, erase or bury facts that stand in the way of what you want to do is a power of its own.  The sunny optimism and complacency that is the American national character depends on that power.  The dark truth is that the maintenance of white supremacy is entirely dependent on a specific kind of ignorance.

       Our history is rife with examples of Americans clinging to that ignorance to maintain wealth, power and position.  Time after time, Americans deployed every tool in their arsenal to insist that their alternate reality be accepted as gospel.  Decaying urban neighborhoods were blamed on a Black “culture of poverty,” rather than official government policy that prohibited investment in Black neighborhoods, or an Interstate Highway System that systematically destroyed Black communities. Despite the fact that the first public schools in the South were established by Black people, who then waged a 50 year legal battle to regain access to those schools after Jim Crow, the so-called “achievement gap” is attributed to Black people not valuing education.

       Willful ignorance allows Americans to view the Black/white wealth gap as a puzzle to be solved by financial literacy classes for Black people.  They refuse to see it as the logical result of policy decisions that can only be addressed by an acknowledgment and an accounting of the cumulative impact of decades of the deliberate exclusion of Black domestics and farm workers from Social Security, Black Southern veterans from the G.I. Bill and Black families from buying homes in Levittown, (Source:  When Affirmative Action Was White, by Ira Katznelson, (W.W. Norton, 2006)).

      It is not simply that much of this country’s wealth was built on stolen land with stolen labor, although that is certainly true.  It is that whenever Black people achieved any economic prosperity or built thriving communities, white people destroyed them through state sanctioned violence.  It happened not only in Tulsa, but in Wilmington, North Carolina, Rosewood, Florida and Elaine, Arkansas.

     This is the history that the dozen states seeking to outlaw the teaching of critical race theory are trying to suppress, (Source:  “Nearly a dozen states want to ban critical race theory in schools,” by Caitlin O’Kane, CBSNews.com, 5/20/21).  Despite relentless demagoguery by Fox News, “critical race theory,” is not being taught in elementary schools.  Critical race theory is the name coined by 

legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw for the “practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society.” It “acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation and the imposition of second class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation,” (Source:  “A Lesson on Critical Race Theory,” by Janel George, Human Rights Magazine, American Bar Association, 1/12/21).

     Thursday night’s Republican filibuster of the bipartisan bill to establish a commission to investigate the January 6th terrorist attack is the apotheosis of ignorance as policy and political strategy.  Those stonewalling further inquiry know that an investigation will show that pernicious white nationalism was the animating force behind the insurrection, white nationalism that they stoked with their misdirection and lies.  Remember that violence, silence and ignorance is the three legged stool that props up white supremacy.  We would do well to remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  It’s the only thing that can.

April 25, 2021

     A Pyrrhic victory.  How else can we describe Derek Chauvin’s conviction Tuesday on charges of 2nd degree unintentional murder, 3rd degree murder and second degree manslaughter when the murder of 20 year old Daunte Wright by a police officer after pretextual traffic stop and laid to rest Thursday looms so large?

     How else do we describe a conviction that only happened because 17 year old Darnella Frazier had the courage and presence of mind to film all excruciatingly long 9 minutes?  During the trial, Darnella testified that there were “nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more,” (Source:  “Darnella Frazier, The Teenager Who Filmed George Floyd’s Arrest, Testifies at Trial,” by Nicholas Bigel-Burroughs and Tim Arango, The New York Times, 3/30/21).  No such anguished insomnia troubles the cops who kill with impunity, or those who empower them.

     How can we feel even a shred of relief when the pace of killings has not slowed since protests erupted after the video of George Floyd’s murder went public? In 2021 alone, 319 people have been killed by the police thus far.  28% of those killed were Black, despite being only 13% of the population. Overall, Black people are three times more likely to be killed by the police than white people, despite being more likely to be unarmed, (Source:  Mappingpoliceviolence.org).

     The starkness of those statistics was brought home by the police killing of 15 year old Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio moments before the verdict was read in the Chauvin trial.  Although the police were called because Ma’Khia was in danger, instead of helping, the police shot her four times at point blank range, (Source:  “Police in Ohio shoot and kill teenage girl, shortly before Derek Chauvin verdict,” by David Matthews and Brian Niemitz, The New York Daily News, 4/20/21).  It is heartbreakingly hard to hail Chauvin’s verdict as a victory as we watch the age of Black and Brown victims of police violence get younger and younger.  

       As we watch the reaction to the Chauvin verdict, it appears that even that small measure of accountability was too much for the myriad forces of white supremacy in this country.  The killing of unarmed Black people continued apace.  In addition to Ma’Khia, police in Elizabeth City, North Carolina killed Andrew Brown on Wednesday, (Source:  “Civil rights leaders want Pasquotank sheriff to resign in the wake of Andrew Brown shooting,” by Adam Wagner and Danielle Battaglia, The News & Observer, 4/24/21).

      Beyond those individual killings which apologists tried to rationalize, states introduced a raft of new laws seeking to criminalize the exercise of First Amendment rights by Black citizens or those who believe in the humanity of Black people, (Source:  “G.O.P Bills Target Protestors (and Absolve Motorists Who Hit Them),” by Reid J. Epstein and Patricia Mazzei, The New York Times, 4/21/21).  Although 96% of Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful, 34 states have introduced 81 bills criminalizing protests and limiting liability for vigilantes who target them.

     This past week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a harsh new law that escalates “public disorder” violations from misdemeanors to felonies and allows the state to override local decisions to reduce police budgets.  Given Florida’s extensive felon disenfranchisement, this law is clearly designed to strip Black people of two vital Constitutional rights— their First Amendment right “ to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” and their right to vote under the 14th and 15th Amendments.

     In this dispiriting environment, the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones v. Mississippi on Thursday was the coup de grace.  In Jones, a 6-3 conservative majority of the Court ruled that judges had broad latitude to sentence juvenile offenders to life in prison without parole.  In an opinion that Mark Joseph Stern aptly called “appalling” and “barbaric,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh dishonestly overturned recent Supreme Court precedent which sharply limited the ability to sentence juveniles to life without parole, while disingenuously claiming that the Court was adhering to precedent, (Source:  “Brett Kavanaugh’s Opinion Restoring Life Without Parole Is Dishonest and Barbaric,” by Mark Joseph Stern, Slate.com, 4/22/21).  Justice Sotomayor pointed out in her scathing dissent that 70% of juveniles sentenced to life without parole are nonwhite.  Thus, Kavanaugh, who was rewarded with a Supreme Court seat despite his “youthful indiscretions,” cavalierly condemned kids of color to consequences that he managed to avoid.

      At every level, from local police officers to the highest court in the land, the forces of virulent racism are determinedly constructing a Gordian knot to ensnare people of color and strip them of every inalienable right, including those of life and liberty.  It is no surprise that we couldn’t celebrate the Chauvin verdict.  This country is already making us pay.

#AbolishtheFilibuster

#PassTheForthePeopleAct

#PasstheGeorgeFloydAct.

April 14, 2021

     Daunte Wright.  We are numb.  Angry.  Sickened by the reason that another name has been seared into our collective consciousness.  In pictures, Daunte looks like a baby, our baby.  Imagine your son, or little brother, or nephew at 20.  On the cusp of manhood, but still a baby.  Imagine a sweet young man who doted on his two year old son and was working hard to take care of him.  Imagine that you were the family who rewarded that sweetness and industry with the gift of a new car just two weeks ago.  Think about how Daunte was treating that gift, making sure it was clean inside and out.  Imagine he had borrowed $50 from you to take it to the car wash and that inside, he hung new air fresheners from the rear view mirror. Continue reading “Imagine”

April 9, 2021

     The current state of the Coronavirus pandemic is an apt metaphor for where we find ourselves as a country, on a knife’s edge between promise and disaster.  Buoyed by the accelerating pace of vaccinations and heedless of the threat of the escalating number of variants, we toggle back and forth between responsibility and recklessness.  Students flock to crowded beaches on spring break and governors announce reopenings, all trusting that, backstopped by the brisk efficiency of the Biden administration, we will win the race between the variants and vaccines.  We see no further than what is in front of us.

      Similarly, without the clarifying threat of the Trump presidency, we have become an atomized society, each of us prioritizing only that which directly affects us.  We fail to see that patriarchal white supremacy is the unifying thread connecting the disparate threats we face– from vote-suppressing laws in Georgia, Texas and 45 other states to laws outlawing appropriate medical care for transgender kids in Arkansas to violence against Asian Americans everywhere. Continue reading “Shared sacrifice?”

March 27, 2021

     On Thursday, barely one week after a gunman murdered 8 people in a racist rampage, Georgia Republicans responded by enacting the most sweeping package of voter suppression laws since the Jim Crow era.  As has been widely reported, the laws now on the books in Georgia are clearly targeted to impact Black, Brown and AAPI voters, who delivered the state for Democrats in November and January.

    The laws restrict voting by limiting drop boxes, curtailing who can vote by provisional ballot and cutting the period for runoff elections from nine weeks to four, (Source:  “Georgia G.O.P. Passes Major Law to Limit Voting Amid Nationwide Push,” by Nick Corasanti, The New York Times, 3/25/21).  The most notorious provision makes it a crime to offer food and water to voters waiting in criminally long lines to vote.  Although that provision grabbed attention for its obvious sadism, the most pernicious feature of the new law is the one which strips the power to regulate elections from the Secretary of State and enables the state Board of Elections to overrule county election boards and to suspend their officials, (Source:  ibid).

      Despite Brian Kemp’s Orwellian claim that these laws would protect election integrity, their true purpose was revealed in the brazen arrest of Black state representative Park Cannon for knocking on Kemp’s office door in an effort to observe this miscarriage of justice in real time.  The brutal images of a 5’2” Black woman being manhandled by burly white state troopers harkens back to the multiple arrests of Black protestors during the Jim Crow era for the “crime” of seeking their  civil rights.  

     Rep. Cannon was arrested despite the fact that the state Constitution explicitly states that legislators “‘shall be free from arrest during sessions of the General Assembly except for treason, felony or breach of the peace,’” (Source:  “Georgia Lawmaker As Governor Signs Law Overhauling Elections,” by Jaclyn Diaz, npr.org).

      Republicans around the country are undeterred by accusations that these laws are racist and anti-Democratic.  To them, that is precisely the point.  These laws are designed to wrest control of governance from the majority and relegate people of color to permanent second class status.

     What, you may ask, will Republicans do with this control once they have it?  A clue can be found in the widespread bills that they have introduced targeting transgender people. The Republican zeal to persecute transgender people is a close second to their brutal determination to reimpose Jim Crow.  In 2021 alone, 73 bills have been introduced targeting transgender people, with 65 of those focused on the ability of transgender youth to access healthcare or participate in sports, (Source: “More Anti-Trans Bills Have Been Introduced in 2021 Than Any Year in History,” by Nico Lang, Self.com, 3/9/21) .

    In addition, the Republicans’ continued intransigence on gun control in the wake of back-to-back gun massacres is evidence that the America they envision is narrow minded, cruel and violent.  There have always been two Americas.  The question is, “how hard are you willing to fight for the one you want to live in?”

March 18, 2021

      Months of escalating and unanswered attacks on Asian Americans culminated in the horrific targeted massacre of eight people on Tuesday night.  Six of the 8 people murdered were Asian women, who were gunned down in three separate locations in the greater Atlanta metro area.  The 21 year old gunman sought to deflect from the obvious racism by claiming that he had a “sex addiction,” and was seeking to eliminate the source of his temptation.  To add insult to injury, Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office downplayed the heinous crime by saying that the suspect “had a bad day” and “this is what he did,” (Source:  “Suspect, 21, charged in Atlanta slayings,” by Tim Craig, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Paulina Firozi and Griff Witte, The Washington Post, 3/17/21).  Given that characterization, it was hardly surprising to learn that Captain Baker had shared racist anti-Asian posts on Facebook.  In the wake of the killings, even those we consider liberal or progressive murmured that they didn’t know the motive, giving credence to the fig leaf of Long’s “sex addiction” excuse, as if they have never heard of intersectionality. Continue reading “#StopAsianHate”