My early political conversations existed mostly on the other side of the aisle from where I stand today. I was surrounded by a conservative Christian community, which couldn’t for a moment entertain a woman’s right to choose or embrace the reality of a woman marrying a woman or put health care for all above profit for self. I struggled in that space, quietly questioning, pushing boundaries, challenging narratives. How can one group of people decide the worth and value of another’s life or limit their access and freedoms? How can we not honor the intrinsic equity of human life? I struggled over the pressures and confusions of these questions until one day in my 20s, I left it behind. I walked into a discovery of my love of democracy. A democracy of radical acceptance and justice and love.
I know now that the questions I was asking then are the fundamental questions of democracy. The great Terry Tempest Williams says: “The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up—ever—trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?”
As I began to tune in to the shaping of American democracy and the power of electoral politics, I was inspired, I was motivated, engaged, curious—even, dare I say, hopeful. I saw within the political process a possibility that our communities would bring to life true equity and inclusion, health and freedom, a balanced economy and sustainable housing, a thriving climate and justice for all. I found hope in democracy for a future that included me and my neighbors who didn’t look like me or think like me. For my co-worker who lost her life to patriarchal gun violence, for the lone Black student in my sixth grade class who endured normalized racism day after day, for the transgendered daughter of my best friend who was being discriminated against by the leadership of her school. Democracy held a hope and a possibility for a more beautiful world, as Charles Eisenstein says.
I have held this love of democracy close, teaching my kids how to uphold a fair and just process, and facilitating conversations with others as they bravely enter the space of seeing one another. I have advocated and campaigned, stood in the gap when division and separation threatened communities and built relationships across chasms to discover that showing up for one another is where the magic happens.
During these last years, we have seen everyday attacks on our democracy become normalized. Access to health care was stripped away, lands were fracked, rainbow flags were burned, children were put in cages, families were separated, Asian women were attacked in the streets, and Black men were murdered by the police. This isn’t partisan politics—this was the degradation of humanity, a systematic assault on our democracy. People have spent their days anticipating and reacting to the everyday assaults on our freedom and our humanity while others barely seemed to notice. All the while, the right has quietly and strategically made a slow and deliberate attack day by day not just on our freedoms, but on our ability to fight for our freedom at all.
Democracy is and always has been fragile and vulnerable and not to be taken for granted. In its very nature, democracy leaves room for disagreement, even ardent disagreement, while creating the structure for decisions to be made peaceably to move communities forward. But the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was the outcome of a sustained assault on the foundations that make democracy possible. The irrational subversion of truth undermining the credibility of the process, the persistent denigration of the rights of others, and the swift dismantling of democratic norms have all been designed to lead to the death of democracy as we know it.
Republicans currently have 389 bills in 48 states that would suppress the right to vote. And with the SLO County Board of Supervisors enacting irrational campaign donation limits, restricting voting access, and taking away automatic vote-by-mail ballots, gerrymandering the redistricting process as we speak, and their most recent inaction to meaningfully address unabashed racist attacks on our county clerk recorder, it is clear that voter suppression is gaining traction. We know the future of American democracy is at stake. But why aren’t more people outraged?
We don’t seem to be taking this as the personal attack it is. If you are frustrated about the lack of mental health care, or policing, or housing prices, or resources for the houseless community, or climate inaction, or our racist district attorney, your attention should be on what is happening at the county Board of Supervisors. Over the next six months, our five supervisors will decide if democracy lives to see another day or if our future will be decided without us. If democracy dies in SLO County, who will we become? And what story will you tell? Δ
Quinn Brady (she/her) is a community advocate, organizer and mother on the Central Coast. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Food & Drink 2021.
It’s the degradation of the last occupational vestiges of a failed British Empire. You are the subject of that occupation. Your ideas were subjected to that occupation from birth. Fly away karma butterfly, the tempest is here.
Blaming the refusal of the rest of society to embrace your crazy left wing wish list, and to remake the world to your liking, on a failure of democracy, is the height of self-absorption and entitlement. You share the country with around 330 million other people, who all have their own preferences on “how things ought to be”. Until you manage to become installed as monarch, you’ll just have to put up with us.
Is it “left wing” to ensure equal access to the vote? This used to be a mainstream tenet for every American. Now we have Republicans who want legislation that will empower our State legislators to over-rule any voter outcome if it doesn’t align with their party interests. Now this sounds like a monarchy, not a democracy!
@A.Cooper: Maintaining the integrity of the voting process does not disenfranchise anyone except the dead, the illegal and the political machines who hope to cast votes for others. Of course, if a particular party insists upon making the process so sloppy that fraud is inevitable, I can understand why they would want to change the process to make it easier.
Another self-absolved soliloquy from the queen of self-absorbed, Quinn Brady.
It would be rare for moderates and conservative people to put much credence into anything that Heidi Harmon’s campaign manager has to say, and most of us simply ignore her rantings. Her attempts to scapegoat Republicans and accuse them of voter suppression are not born out by the facts, and I guess Quinn Brady is so busy being a do-gooder that she hasn’t realized that checking the ID’s of voters is NOT suppression, it is simply an act to insure the integrity of the election.
If expecting adults to produce an ID while voting is racist, and an act of voter suppression, then Democrats are correct. If, on the other hand, expecting people to produce an ID when voting is just good election security, then Quinn Brady and the rest of the Alt Left extremist ought to be ashamed of themselves, and the broader public ought to discount the false allegations that Democrats make going forward.
Abandon Democrats in 2022/2024.
“Steve Edwards” is the pseudonym for a white nationalist Trump-troll who lacks the courage to post under his real name.
“G. Gorden Fugly” is the pseudonym of a white liberal elite communist-troll who lacks the courage to post under his real name.
Thank you, Quinn, for always speaking truth to power. We need to elect people who truly represent us, and right now some represent only their special interests. I think that most people believe we should all be able to vote easily. Most people think everyone should have good affordable healthcare. Most people believe all should have a living wage. Our legislators don’t always represent us though! We must elect those who do! Until we can take money out of elections, it will be hard but it has to happen.
Quinn and Heidi are shills for special interests themselves, She protects the unions with city contracts, and they, in turn, donate to her reelection campaign. Heidi does the bidding of the whacky Alt Left progressives, and they turn a blind eye to working families on the Central Coast.
In terms of voting, it has never been hard. You simply request an absentee ballot, and one is sent. Can it get easier than that? If it can, should it be a focus to make voting ‘easier’, I don’t get it. Also, I think it is reasonable to have people produce ID when they register and when they vote, it’s common sense.
A living wage? If people want to make more money, they should not put that responsibility on the government and the consumers. They should get more skills, job training and education. Most people pass though minimum wage jobs, they aren’t intended to provide a livable wage. Go to Portland, and you will see that a cup of coffee cost $11.00 because of livable wage.
Quinn and Heidi have the wrong prescription for working families on the Central Coast.
Steven K. Edwards: enters
Steven K. Edwards: unpacks his large, smooth, rational brain. smiles
Steven K. Edwards: “What working families want is to pass through a minimum wage job. One not intended to provide a livable wage. Working families don’t want to burden their employers or consumers.”
Working Families: “We’d like livable wage jobs.” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021…
Steven K. Edwards: “Wrong. Get it? Alt-Left. Blue Lives. Free Rent.”
Rightword=Aaron=MickeySmith=G.GordenFugly=NJRabbit=NeighborhoodCriminal=SAME TROLL.
I thank our ‘friends, above, for the free rent in their head, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
The fact remains that the AltLeft is hopelessly out-of-touch with working families in SLO, and Heidi and Quinn have the wrong prescription for our community. In this article, the use of hate speech against the local Conservative Christian community speaks volumes of Ms. Brady’s true character, I say forgive her Lord, she knows not what she does. Her attacks on those who choose life instead of baby killing are pathetic, however I am glad to see her hatred and intolerance on display for the whole community to see. Apparently, Ms. Brady cannot understand that many people of faith feel a moral imperative to defend unborn children, and I have to wonder WWJD? Jesus would not favor killing babies.
On another note, the hysteric, so-called ‘progressive’ left is simply trying to recruit low-information voters as they attack political attempts to keep our American elections free of both voter fraud and voter suppression. It is clear we need a national standard on how to run impartial elections, and I remind my Alt Left ‘friends’ that is was Democrat Stacy Abrahms who first screamed ‘election fraud’ when she lost a senate race in Georgia. Democrat hypocrisy!
I hope Quinn Brady can keep an open mind, for one day she might see the error of her ways. Instead of attacking Christians and Jews, she should seek to understand the motivations of those true believers who feel compelled to stand up for the voiceless. Hey wait, isn’t that what Ms. Brady herself claims to do?
Blue Lives Matter
Steve, the best way to cut down on low-information voters is to have something like a literacy test or a poll tax. Have you considered recommending that approach to your legislators? I think we used to do that and it was always done for very good reasons, like just trying to target low-information voters, which are a real thing and not at all simply a correlation in your own mind to people you don’t want voting.
NeighborhoodCriminal=Rightword=Aaron=MickeySmith=G.GordenFugly=NJRabbit==SAME TROLL.
As I think you already know, Its not an issue of wanting or not wanting some people to vote, the issue I raise with my comments on low-information voters is that the messaging from the Alt. Left is intentionally trying to inflame issues, ignite passions and lead people to believe a narrative that isnt so, its pathetic.
Case-in-point: in 2018, the Democrats in Georgia ran liberal Stacy Abrahms, who narrowly lost to the more mainstream Republican candidate, and, when she lost, Democratic operatives produced a narrative that the election had somehow been stolen from her. Not a single judge in the state of Georgia agreed, and now it it common knowledge that she and the whacky Democrats were trying to get some folks to believe their vote hadnt been counted, and the election was not legitimate. More recently, Republicans have used the same playbook, its equally wrong.
My message to both parties, and to the extremist on both sides, is that questioning the integrity of the election without proof or substantiating evidence is wrong, and damages our democracy. I would add that assaults on our democracy, whether by the left or the right, are wrong and, in fact, do damage confidence in our democracy. However, I disagree that our democracy is fragile, and attempting to get people to believe that our democracy is in the hands of people who speak and assert falsehoods, is to give them more credit than they deserve. Your juvenile and idiotic comments about poll taxes and literacy test suggest to me that you yourself engage in trying to recruit low-information voters in support of your extremist ideology.
Our community and country deserve more than people who intentionally seek to divide our unity, most Americans get along, respect others and want to see our country come together to make progress. We deserve it.
Keep your soul clean and your boots dirty Jeremiah 29:11
Stop Voter Fraud: Require ID when Registering & Voting.
Stop Voter Suppression: Count Every Vote.
Stop Inflaming Low-Information Voters.
Support Mainstream Values
Reject BLM/Antifa/SQE Idiocy.
You got me. My extremist ideology is that peoples’ votes shouldn’t be discarded because they didn’t vote in prior elections (something that happened). And that we shouldn’t make it harder for people to vote due to fears of widespread voter fraud (something that didn’t happen). Unity, to you, is when you say votes shouldn’t count, I say votes should count, so we count half the votes and call it democracy in order to make you happy.
Dear Neighborhood Clown,
Your reasoning, or lack thereof, makes me think that you were good friends with Adam Hill, cocaine addict.
County Every Vote
Monitor Voter Fraud
Require ID when Registering & Voting
Honor Democratic Elections
Belittle Nonsense from Bloggers!
RIP Adam Hill