Georgia is the reckoning
16th November 2020 · 0 Comments
The wanton deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of police, have fueled calls for a “national reckoning” for the racism and devaluation of Black lives, which have been tools of oppression, suppression and intimidation of Black people in the U.S., where white supremacy and structural racism have gone unchecked. Police brutality, redlining, job discrimination and inequality have become routine in the lives of America’s people of color, who only want a fair chance at securing the American Dream.
But the national reckoning is upon this nation now and it is emanating from Georgia, where Black voters struck the first blow against the coordinated system of American Apartheid, formerly known as Jim Crow, which was carried into the 21st Century by whites who refuse to concede power.
Frederick Douglass, a former slave, abolitionist and publisher, gave his people sage advice that echoes today: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.”
After the Black Lives Movement took to the streets and the resistance to white supremacy and racism grew nationwide and internationally, protesters made their voices heard at the ballot box. They flipped the reliably red states of Arizona and Georgia blue and sent shock waves across the GOP, the Oval Office and through right wing media and Republican governors’ offices.
Even as the recount of nearly five million ballots is ongoing in Georgia, where Biden leads Trump by more than 14,000 votes, Georgia’s voters are poised to impose the reckoning on the entire United States. Their votes in the upcoming senatorial run-offs on January 5, 2021 will determine who controls the U.S. Senate. One pollster said this is the most consequential election in modern times.
If Black voters in Georgia elect Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Reverend Raphael Warnock to the Senate, we may witness an end to a Republican-dominated Senate that cares only for self-enhancement and big tax breaks for major corporations and the wealthiest individuals in the nation.
If Ossoff and Warnock are sent to the Senate, Joe Biden’s agenda for America can go forward. If not, gridlock and blockages of democratic legislation will persist.
The two GOP Senate run-off candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler who must face Ossoff and Warnock, respectively, attacked their own.
They called for the resignation of Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. They are quoted as saying “There have been too many failures in Georgia’s elections this year”…and that the SOS has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections. “He failed the people of Georgia,” they said.
We wonder who, in their eyes, are the people of Georgia? Only white people or only Republicans? Just rural people? Or maybe just people of means? Is the thought of the “others” to them translate into voter fraud?
Is the SOS derelict in his duties because he allowed others to register or reregister after Kemp had them purged?
Well, it appears that Loeffler and Perdue haven’t noticed Georgia’s changing demographics. Whites make up 52 percent of the population but the various ethnic groups, including Blacks, comprise 50 percent.
If Georgians send Democrats to the Senate, they will break the GOP’s punitive gridlock of democrats’ legislation, end the stacking of the courts, like the Supreme Court seats the GOP stole, the trillions in permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, Republicans attempts to kill ObamaCare, while the coronavirus pandemic is claiming thousands of American lives daily, and Republicans’ failure to pass The Heroes Act, which House Democrats passed in May to help unemployed American workers, small businesses, hospitals and health care workers, and state and local governments.
The Heroes Act has been sitting on Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) since the House passed the bill.
The gridlock started with the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, American’s first African-American president. It was then that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans, known to black Americans as the party of white resistance and white supremacy, vowed not to pass any of Obama’s proposed legislation.
At that time, Democrats controlled the House and the Senate and gave Obama several legislative wins, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid expansion, and retention of the Dreamers program, among other accomplishments.
Meanwhile, Republicans in state houses drew gerrymandered districts lines after the 2010 Census and in 2013, the Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of the preclearance clause of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to repressive voting laws designed to stop Black people from voting, including denying ex-felons their voting rights, Voter ID laws, voter list purges, shortened early voting periods, closure of polling sites, and unreasonable registration timelines.
For example, in red Louisiana you must register to vote 20 days before a primary and 30 days before a general election. Conversely, some Democrat-led states like California have same-day voter registration.
In an epic tide of white resentment against the nation’s first Black president, white voters in gerrymandered districts gave Republicans control of both the Senate and the House in 2014.
But 2018 yielded hints of the reckoning to come: a slate of young, progressive democrats, women, snatched control of the House from the Republicans; even as the GOP retained senatorial control.
On January 5, 2021, Georgia will decide whether the U.S. Senate will continue its decades-long practice of obstructionism and white supremacy or whether Democrats will be able to move President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda forward.
Georgia is the reckoning. Just like South Carolina rose Biden from the dead, Georgia can make a definitive statement about what we’ve always known. If we vote we win!
If Black Georgians vote, they have the power to once and for all put to bed the notion that people can ignore us! Black Georgians can secure a quicker end to COVID-19; a stimulus package; healthcare guarantees, and access to other paths to the American Dream.
Hopefully, Black voters nationwide will learn from the voter registration and get out the vote campaigns of Stacey Abrams and her Fair Fight colleagues, who added 800,000 new voters to Georgia’s rolls.
Georgia voters have shown what can be done if people are willing to put the work in. Too often, Black people opt out of voting. Some question the validity of voting because they don’t see how it benefits them. Others believe their vote won’t make a difference, and some don’t believe in participating in the political system at all.
President Barack Obama addressed voters’ concerns in a video, while campaigning for Joe Biden.
“Right now, from the White House on down, folks are working to keep people from voting, especially communities of color,” he said.
“There are a lot of people out there trying to confuse and mislead you about this election. They’re trying to make you cynical. They’re trying to get you to believe that your vote doesn’t matter…Do not let them do that. Our democracy is a precious thing, and it’s up to all of us to protect it.”
Obama advised voters of color to be patient but to continue to vote in large numbers. He cautioned that progress happens incrementally and through small successes, but nothing will happen if people don’t vote.
Black Georgians did what the majority of Black folk everywhere must do in order to level the playing field: Vote in massive numbers. We need to plan to vote in every election, not just in presidential elections.
This article originally published in the November 16, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
