What’s at stake – vote now

By Julianne Malveaux
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

I was on a Black Women’s organizing call the other week, when one of the leaders challenged each of us to reach out to ten people to encourage them to vote. I don’t know a soul in my close circle who does not vote, and I don’t seek out folk who proudly say they are not voters. I do collide with a few from time to time, like when I was walking up the street one day when a brother, recognizing me, wanted to argue that voting was a waste of time. I gave him five minutes (set my watch) and then moved on. Most people I know are politically aware, political activists, civic and social justice activists and more. Maybe my circle is too narrow, and I’m all right with it.

This column is not for those who “do the right thing”, vote despite their skepticism about our extremely flawed country and our equally flawed political system. This column is for those who wonder about their votes and whether they make a difference. What’s at stake? Every single election since I can remember – 1972 – we say that this is the “most important” election in our lifetimes.” Tricky Dick Nixon had 61 percent of the popular vote and swept the Electoral College, winning every state except the District of Columbia and Massachusetts. Nixon steamrolled the liberal McGovern. Was it our most important election ever? One can both argue that and also wonder how our nation might have evolved under a McGovern presidency.

I recall hearing the “most important election ever” every four years and while it sometimes reads as an exaggeration, sometimes it is more real than we would like to admit. When the Supreme Court stole the 2000 election from then-Vice President Al Gore, that was a consequential election. Did Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton concede too soon in her race against Mr. Trump? To be debated, but many think so. 2020 was such a consequential election that the dark forces of Mr. Trump tried to overturn the government to steal the election. Now he says he will pardon them if elected in 2024.

So in many ways this is a most consequential election. What’s at stake? Some think describing the 45th president as a “threat to democracy” is extreme and untrue. But Project 2025 shift our system from one with checks and balances to one with imperial power. We have a robust civil service, that a president that adheres to Project 2025 would shatter, in a system that would allow Presidential appointments to replace civil servants. Black folks, especially Black women would lose from this shift.

All women, but especially Black women, lose when reproductive rights are restricted. We are also when draconian policies eviscerate public assistance in the name of “welfare reform” and make even basic health benefits contingent on work. We don’t have the infrastructure to require work, but we do have the ability to punish those who do not have jobs.

The Department of Education is on the Project 2025 chopping block, and its elimination would have a widen the achievement gap. Project 2025 would eliminate Head Start, one of our most demonstratively successful government programs. It would eliminate Pell grants, which help hundreds of thousands of student from low and moderate income families to attend college. It would eliminate race-specific programs and affirmative action, by outlawing programs that consider DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in selection and allocation. Indeed, project 2025 digs into the details of curriculum, regulating the ways subject matter is taught, including history, enslavement and other subjects. Project 2025 would punish universities based on the way some subjects taught. While Project 2025 purports to streamline government, instead it expands government by creating ideological regulators who would eliminate “left liberals” and “Marxists” from classrooms in elementary and secondary schools, and also in colleges and universities.

Contrasting the Project 2025/Agenda 47/Republican platform is to understand the redundancies of these closely related documents. Mr. Trump says that Agenda 47 reflects his positions, and he tries to distance himself from Project 2025, although more than 100 of his allies, associates, and former government appointees worked on it. If you read these documents carefully, you’ll understand what’s at stake.

Law enforcement. The environment. Immigration. Elections. Consumer Protection. Union rights. Wages, Vice President Kamala Harris a distinctively different approach to policy and government than Mr. Trump. Are you willing to live in an oligarchy where one president has the unchecked authority to investigate, fire or prosecute. Are we willing to shrug off our freedoms for a narrow-minded vituperative bigot? What’s at stake? Our very freedoms. Staying home is not an option. VOTE!!!

This article originally published in the November 4, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.