Tuesday night with the drop of the Dekalb County Georgia votes I went to bed with a sense of optimism for where the U.S. was headed. When I awoke yesterday and saw the alert on my phone that Warnock had won and Ossoff was leading I left for work with great hope for the days moving forward. It also coincided with a work-day from hell that I knew I was going to be in a drag race to finish.
As I was in and out of my truck I was doing my best to follow coverage of the Georgia runoffs and NPR’s discussions of the day. I began to think about one of the things that was being repeatedly questioned. They were wondering if the results in Georgia were a rebuke to trump or if it was something else.
My thought on this was how it was not a rebuke of trump at all. It was the results of the shackles of suppression being loosened. Stacey Abrams may not have been able to fully remove those shackles from her fellow suppressed Georgians, but she was able to loosen them enough to show that even Deep-South States can flip to blue. trump’s base successfully grew in the November election and I haven’t seen any evidence that it was impacted in the runoffs either. But, she (Abrams) was able to show that when the will of the whole people is followed huge change is possible.
The calls to overturn the election on the basis of voter legitimacy is rooted in racism. They aren’t questioning votes of rural white Americans, they are talking about Urban Voters of Color. They are saying- we have kept you from voting in the past and this shouldn’t be possible now, without actually saying it. The voice of Black Americans and other People of Color being heard doesn’t frighten the Right, it terrifies them. They know that many of the states they currently hold power in is because of this suppression. They also know that if they cannot continue this suppression, the power they seek will disappear. If it is possible to flip both senate seats in Georgia, it is possible in Alabama or Mississippi or any other red state with a diverse population. The thought of loosing that power will embolden the attempts to prevent it.
The concern here is how repercussions from this flip will impact states moving forward, especially red states. We are going to see conservative legislatures do everything in their power to prevent this from happening to them. The hurdles that will be raised are going to be difficult to clear to say the least. Moving forward it’s going to take hundreds or thousands of Stacey Abrams level organizers and leaders to keep these shackles from cutting off the voices of suppressed Americans.
As my morning progressed I started to break from these thoughts but couldn’t keep them out of my head. After switching to listening to some sports podcasts in the middle of my day I continued racing to finish my workload. I was racing the clock and not gaining any time and was completely oblivious to what was taking place. I received a message from my wife that she needed comfort food and didn’t think much of it. When I called to ask what was up, she said she just wanted to cry. At this moment I knew I had missed something and what I began to learn about would consume my attention up until the moment that I typed this.
Many of us already knew that Black Americans with bullhorns, signs, and public voices scare America more than armed White Nationalist terrorists. Yesterday was not the first occasion of this being evident. However, it was the most awakening for many who were previously blind to it. This leads to Part 2 of this day.
Changed So Much! 