November 9, 2020
What a week! In the past seven days, we have cycled through fear, enervation and elation. On Tuesday night, when we once again lost Texas and Florida, we experienced PTSD from 2016. Many of us took to our beds, dreading what news the morning would bring. Even though we knew that the artificially engineered delay in counting absentee ballots would create a “red mirage,” we failed to anticipate just how awful it would feel.
As the week wore on and the vote count for Biden inched up, closing the gap in Pennsylvania and widening it in Nevada, networks’ failure to call certain states created a space for Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories. Their caution began to seem more like coddling, as Trump and his toadies trafficked in lies and armies of polo-shirted vigilantes descended on Detroit’s Cobo Hall and Philadelphia’s Convention Center in an effort to intimidate election workers counting ballots. They chanted “stop the count,” where Trump was leading and “count that vote,” in states where Trump was behind. Trump’s followers were unbothered by the complete lack of evidence for their accusations or by their embarrassing 0-10 record in their sanction-worthy lawsuits alleging voting irregularities.
Then, Friday morning at 4:30 a.m., Joe Biden opened up a lead in Georgia. Georgia, the state that hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. Georgia, where the last non-Southern presidential candidate to carry the state was JFK in 1960! (H/t Ben Schatz). The lead steadily grew from 917 votes Friday morning, to just over 10,000 last night, as votes from suburban Clayton and Gwinnett Counties rolled in,(Source: “Politics: Live Updates,” by the staff of The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 11/8/20). In a poetic coup de grace, the initial 917 votes came from the Congressional District of the late Congressman John Lewis.
That stunning victory was made possible by the brilliant strategic activism of Black women. Stacey Abrams and her Fair Fight organization, LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter and Nse Ufot of the New Georgia Project mobilized suburban voters and registered and turned out new Black, Latinx and Asian-American voters to capitalize on the state’s increased diversity and deliver for Biden/Harris. In fact, it was Black voters around the country, along with Indigenous voters in Arizona and Latinx voters in Arizona and Nevada, that powered Biden to victory, (Source: “How Black voters in key cities helped deliver the election for Joe Biden,” by Janell Ross, NBCnews.com, 11/7/20).
Finally, on Saturday morning at 11:24 a.m., after another batch of Philadelphia votes made his lead insurmountable, the networks finally declared that Joseph Robinette Biden would be the 46th President of the United States. The reaction was electric and immediate. Spontaneous dance parties erupted in cities from New York to Philadelphia to D.C., where folks did the Cupid Shuffle in front of The White House. The leafy calm of the suburbs was interrupted by the sound of whoops and cowbells; their quaint downtowns hosting impromptu parades. AKAs strolled in their pink and green regalia and Howard alums became even more insufferable than usual :). Church bells pealed in Paris and one by one, every member of the G-7 called President-Elect Biden to congratulate him.
By the time Vice President Elect Kamala Harris and President Elect Biden took the stage in Wilmington Saturday night, our hearts were full from experiencing two emotions that have been in short supply for four long years – joy and hope. This is not to say that the road ahead will be easy. After all, 70 million of our fellow Americans voted for a man who emboldened and encouraged white supremacists, tortured immigrant children and called our veterans “losers.” Democrats, always looking to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, were busy blaming progressives for the loss of seats in the House and, unless we win the Georgia runoffs, President Biden will face a hostile Senate majority once again led by Mitch McConnell.
Still, we should savor this moment. We did this. Faced with unspeakable injustice, cruelty and corruption, we refused to duck and cover. We fought back. We marched, we mobilized, we donated. We volunteered in droves –phone banking, text banking, writing postcards to voters; serving as poll workers and poll watchers to make sure that everyone could vote and that every vote was counted. People listened to Black women and finally let us lead. That is how we won. The truth is that we came perilously close to losing our democracy to a fascist clown and we should never forget that it was inclusive activism that saved it. Congratulations to us!!! Don’t stop now.
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Yes! Yes! Yes! In the words of our beloved Tanya, SPEAK IT! Always on point Lisa.