Get up! Stand up for your rights
29th July 2019 · 0 Comments
The adage “The world is a stage, and everyone is playing a part,” fits this historic moment in American history. Donald Trump, a former reality TV host, failed businessman, and opportunist is just playing another role: President of the United States. His recent stand-up routine before a group of young Republicans shows that he will do anything to get a cheer or applause.
While standing before a doctored U.S. Presidential Seal, Trump looked buffoonish as he tried to elicit laughter; called political opponents names, gestured wildly; and used the OK sign (adopted by white supremacists) to show solidarity with those in the white nationalist movement.
But the joke was on Trump. The time-honored U.S. Presidential Seal that projected on a wall next to Trump’s podium is now the meme seen around the world. The image on the seal was of a two-headed eagle, holding golf clubs in one talon and dollars in the other. The banner above the eagle’s heads read in Spanish: 45 is a puppet. The image looked suspiciously like Russia’s Coat of Arms, which depicts a two-headed eagle. The real U.S. Presidential Seal depicts an eagle with one head, with arrows in one talon, an olive branch in the other, and the U.S. motto on its banner in Latin: E Pluribus Unum, which means “Out of Many, One.” The audio-visual tech responsible for the fake seal was fired but lauded on social media.
Brevity aside, Trump is a bad actor, a suspected co-conspirator in what some believe is a criminal syndicate operating out of the White House, and he is destroying democracy before over very eyes.
Trump is reversing environmental safety regulations, attacking civil rights (directing the DOJ not to enforce Consent Decrees), denying climate change, attacking people of color in Puerto Rico, in Congress, and on the southern border, (putting children and adults seeking asylum in profit-making Concentration Camps), wreaking the Constitution, breaking laws, ignoring congressional subpoenas, stacking the courts with extremist judges, enriching himself and his family, and setting the stage for the same election interference for 2020 that put him in the White House.
The uproar across the nation is reaching a fevered pitch, as pundits, elected officials, and social justice advocates complain about Trump’s white nationalist agenda and his efforts to become an authoritarian dictator and many on Capitol Hill and nationally are calling for Congress to impeach Trump.
Trump has thrown down the gauntlet. Most Americans are dissatisfied with the most unpopular president in modern times, but the question is: What are ‘we the people’ going to do about it? In fact, what are you, dear readers, going to do about it?
We everyday Americans do well to heed Bob Marley’s message:
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don’t give up the fight!
Clearly waiting on Congress to act is not the answer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided long ago not to impeach Trump. She is betting that American voters will vote Trump out of office. It could happen. But gambling on the premise that right-thinking Americans will “do the right thing” and oust Trump is a gamble that ignores the win-at-any cost tactics he used to get in the White House: Russia’s cyberwarfare, racially gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, Russia-hacked voting machines, and a direct appeal to white nationalists and white resentment. Trump is betting those same strategies will keep him in the White House for another four years, and long enough for the clock to run out on any indictments that he surely deserves for conspiracy, treason, and obstruction of justice.
Of all the data, redacted and unredacted, about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, much of the news coverage about Russian interference focused on Russian troll farms putting out fake news about Clinton, Clinton’s hacked emails, and social media ads.
However, Russia’s hacking into the voting machines is where the real theft of the last presidential election took place but few, except those in the print media, noticed.
Russia’s hacking of U.S. voting machines in 2016 remained background noise in electronic and print newspapers, until last Thursday, the day after former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before the U.S. Congress Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, where Mueller testified that Russia interfered in the presidential election and is interfering “as we sit here.” The next day, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its finding on Russian interference and dropped a bomb: Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states.
And this is clearly how Trump expects to win again.
Trump won in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, with just 107,000 more popular votes than Clinton, which gave him the electoral college victory.
Early news reports in 2016 of Russians hacking into election machinery cited Wisconsin as one of the state’s whose electoral system was breeched. Bloomberg News reported in 2017 that Russia hacked voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 presidential election. In one case, hackers tried to delete and alter voter data.
Russian hackers were able to breach one Florida county’s voting systems in 2016. Hackers not only accessed the county’s systems, but had the ability to change voter roll data, according to The New York Times.
On November 6, 2018, the same day as the mid-term elections, Reuters reported that Ivanka Trump, 45’s daughter, got voting machine trademarks from China. Four months later, Ivanka reportedly met with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on the same day in February 2018 that a Republican-majority Georgia House Committee approved new barcode ballot-marking devices – which all cyber security experts warn against.
Kemp’s victory over Stacey Abrams, an African-American political activist was straight up bogus. As Georgia’s Secretary of State, Kemp oversaw the very election he was competing in. Abrams lost the election by 50,000 votes and immediately sued the Georgia board of elections, citing widespread allegations of voter suppression.
As for Trump, it is interesting that Brad Parscale, his digital manager during the 2016 election, is the campaign manager of Trump’s 2020 campaign. Read between the lines, people.
Trump’s voter suppression and voter theft strategies are being aided and abetted by the silent majority, Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
But the main gatekeeper for voter suppression and a white nationalist agenda is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has voted for the past 34 years against legislation that would benefit people of color and voted for any bills that would strip Blacks of their voting rights. Aimed primarily at keeping people of color from the polls, McConnell has repeatedly attacked the voting rights.
McConnell is a part of Trump’s conspiracy to obstruct justice and to help put Trump back in office, as evidenced by his refusal to put election protection bills on the Senate floor to a vote.
In March 2019, McConnell refused to call for a vote on the House’s electoral reform bill, which contains a series of voting reforms including automatic voter registration, expansion of early voting, endorsement of D.C. statehood and a requirement that independent commissions oversee House redistricting. In addition, the bill required “dark money” groups to disclose donors.
Facing a potential torrent of criticism for not doing enough about Russian interference in the upcoming 2020 election and with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, III’s appearance before U.S. House Committees pending, Senate Republicans last week passed legislation that would make it a federal crime to hack into voting systems. But what does that matter if machines, like Ivanka’s, can automatically transmit data or erase data, at the flick of a finger?
Moreover, McConnell last week again refused to allow election integrity bills to be voted on the same day that Mueller testified before Congress.
McConnell tabled Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s request to pass legislation, from the democratic-majority House, that funds the Election Assistance Commission and sets up a requirement to use paper ballots, calling it “partisan legislation.” He also denied Senator Richard Blumenthal’s request to pass a bill that would require political candidates, their families, and campaign associates to report offers of assistance from foreign governments to the FBI.
So, the Trump fix is in at the federal level.
But since all politics is local, it’s safe to say that Louisiana’s racially gerrymandered districts, at-large elections for district seats (in some parishes), the lack of Sunday voting, and voter identification requirements, all point to a voting system badly in need of reform.
The results of the “Jim Crow Tricks,” as Carl Galmon calls them, are evident in who holds elected offices across Louisiana. Galmon, a civil rights activist and nationally recognized voting rights advocate, recently analyzed the political class in Louisiana: U.S. Senators, two seats – No Blacks. U.S. Congressmen, six seats – one Black. State Supreme Court Judges, seven seats, one Black, State Senators, 39 seats – nine Blacks, State Representatives, 105 Seats – 24 Blacks. Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, 11 seats, two Blacks. Judges, 785 white, 22 percent Black. According to Census data, Blacks comprise 32.18 percent of the Louisiana population, statewide.
You don’t have to be a mathematician to see how underrepresented Blacks are in this state.
So again, what are we; what are you going to do about it?
Civil rights advocates Galmon, Ted Quant, and Viola Washington are doing something about it. On Wednesday, August 21, at Nora Navra Library, from 5 p.m. – 7:45 p.m., they are presenting a discussion on redistricting and the upcoming 2020 Census. This is the first in a series of events to inform and organize people of color to take control of their political futures and fight for the right to choose who represents them.
There is something we all can do. We can vote in droves; vote like our lives depend on our votes, because our civil, constitutional, and human rights are being threatened, as is our democracy.
If people of color turn out in record numbers, demand racial parity (watch and comment on the way the Republican-majority in the Louisiana Legislature redraws district lines after the 2020 Census) and sue the state, if necessary; if we recruit, donate to, and volunteer in the campaigns of people who have inclusive agendas (It’s ok to ask what are you going to do for we the people), and vote against those who are serving themselves and sucking up taxpayers’ money, we can stop the corruption and move forward with Abraham Lincoln’s credo in mind: “…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
If we do nothing, Nazism and fascism may become the new normal in our government and in our lives.
This article originally published in the July 29, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
