As I write, it is the Fourth of July and I am visiting my family home after many years away. Sitting on the roof with my children watching fireworks light up the sky I feel the pull within myself about the complexities of it all: a night sky full of color and my kids’ wonder-filled eyes, a country that many have served to strive toward independence, all overshadowed by the knowledge that we live on stolen land, built by slaves in an America where not all are free.
The America so many fought to create has always claimed to hold the principles of a free and fair democracy. Celebrating America’s Independence Day this year carries a significant weight in a time when Republicans across the country are actively working to dismantle our voting rights through legislation that at its very core is anti-American. No amount of red, white and blue can mask the fact that we still inhabit a land stolen from native people who we continue to disenfranchise through environmental racism, oppression, and incarceration. No star-spangled banner and sparkler clad celebration can hide the deep threads of injustice faced by those who carry America on their backs every single day. No American flag T-shirt can dress up the daily assaults on our democracy, on our democratic process, and on our democratic principles.
The current stripping away of the voting rights of those who call America home is an assault on the fundamental freedoms and rights our country so adamantly claims to value. Oppressive policies, unabashed police brutality, legislation intended to strip groups of people of their basic human rights, attempts to ban critical race theory from our schools, rampant voter suppression efforts, and negligence on critical climate action—this anti-American dream is the new Republican flag.
Today’s Republican Party exploits power at every level in an effort to maintain their idea of control. From partisan gerrymandering to exploiting the filibuster, they are taking every opportunity to quickly pass strategic voter suppression bills and election related policies meant to cause fear and weaken faith in our democratic system. If you attend any recent SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting, you will see the same calculated efforts here in our backyard. The integrity of our local elections is being deliberately disassembled piece by piece. Each move may seem inconsequential on its own and easy to gloss over, but together the recent changes and decisions hold the power to shape our elections and the future of our communities for decades to come.
These flailing attempts to stifle progress and dismantle our systems of democracy are a sign of the desperation of the right. As elections have become increasingly partisan and the Republican Party moves to the right, they are having a hard time winning over voters. Rather than winning elections in traditional methods by doing the work of swaying voters to candidates, Republicans are actively working to win elections by limiting voters and their access to the ballot. It’s simple, but in truth it’s hard to deny. Their constant fear-mongering and accusations of voter fraud reveal their long-disguised drive for voter suppression. By stomping on participation, creating unjust barriers to access and strategically disqualifying those on the edges, the right is displaying a gross and unabashed belief that in their privilege, they deserve more than others.
These next few months and years are critical. While Democrats saw significant victories in 2020, history indicates Republicans would make gains in the coming elections. But recent voter participation combined with the visceral assault on our freedoms stands to motivate a different kind of outcome in 2022. This is enough to scare the Republican Party and unite their leaders at every level under one banner; stifling the soul of America by destroying Democracy as we know it.
It is time to stop waiting for someone else to save democracy, and stop pretending it is too radical to end the filibuster, abolish the electoral college and adopt campaign finance reform. When you vote next in SLO County, the outcome won’t just be based on who showed up. It will be based on how the current county supervisor majority thwarted the process and manipulated the playing field before voting even began. We have critical questions to ask ourselves now. Are we “more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity”? (MLK) Or do we want democracy to live to see another day? It’s not hyperbole, it’s a wake up call. We should be fighting for the future that we all deserve, because no one is free until everyone is free. Only then can we wave a flag for an American way that welcomes everyone. 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 Jul 8-18, 2021.
I DISAGREE with Ms. Quinn Brady!
As a local political operative for leftist politicians like Heidi Harmon, Quinn Bradys idealogical leanings once again get the better of her, the nonsense is predictable, and she seems to throw away the facts in a race to excoriate moderates and conservatives. To believe Ms. Bradys hysterical rant this week is to believe the walls are caving in, and the institutions of our American democracy are stronger than her political ideology. Why the trumped up hysterics?
So-called alt-left progressives like Quinn Brady have attempted to introduce hysterics into what is otherwise legitimate debate about proposed legislation and public policy, and it is clear to many that the extreme left is simply trying to control the debate by using their worn out tactic of accusing moderates and conservatives of voter suppression and racism for attempting to clean up our famously inconsistent voter registration and voting processes. Is the GOP racist for proposing that people to show an ID card when registering to vote and participating in making public decisions? No!
As Democrats try to push the For the People Act through the Senate, some of the party’s top figures are changing their tune on voter ID rules they previously called “racist.”
In an effort to garner bipartisan support for the act, Sen. Joe Manchin, http://D-W.Va., has proposed a set of compromises. One would expand voter ID laws, long a legislative objective for the GOP. The line from the Manchin memo: “Require voter ID with allowable alternatives (utility bill, etc.) to prove identity to vote”.
When asked about the compromise recently, Stacey Abrams, the former gubernatorial candidate for Georgia and Fair Fight Action founder, who has long railed against voter ID laws, said she “absolutely” could support Manchin’s proposal even if voter ID was a part of it. “No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote. It’s been part of our nation’s history since the inception of voting,” Abrams told the liberal CNN network.
However, many top Democrats have been deriding voter ID laws as suppressive and racist for years, including Abrams. As recently as this past March, she referred to Georgia’s recent voting-rights bills, which included expanding voter ID laws, as “racist” and “a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie. She wasnt the only leftist politician using that talking point.
In March, President Biden mentioned that the passage of the Georgia voting bills “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.” Biden also has referred to voter ID laws as a racially charged “attempt to repress minority voting masquerading as an attempt to end corruption. Declarations like that are unproductive and beneath the dignity of the office of the presidency. Biden knows better.
As a senator, Vice President Kamala Harris tried to sink the nomination of 5th Circuit Court Judge Kyle Duncan by criticizing him for trying to reinstate a voter ID law she called “racist,” noting a liberal appeals court wrote that it “targeted African-Americans with almost surgical precision. As a woke progressive politician, Kamala Harris never misses an opportunity to mistake the facts and introduce ideological nonsense into public policy debates. Sad.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., also has spoken at great length about how he believed voter ID laws were racially suppressive. “Dealing with these voter ID laws, this is not about voter verification, this is about voter suppression. Theyre still playing the same games,” he said in a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 2015. Now, as a US Senator, Mr. Warnock falsely claims he never opposed voter ID laws! The hypocrisy is glaring.
Furthermore, Warnock said in his first speech before the Senate, “We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we have seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim Crow in new clothes.”
Now, despite his continued pummeling of voter ID laws in the past, Warnock, like Stacey Abrams, has flipped on the topic.
“I have never been opposed to voter ID,” Warnock told NBC News in an interview published Thursday. “And in fact, I don’t know anybody who is who believes people shouldn’t have to prove that they are who they say they are.”
The recent change in the Democrats’ tone on voter ID could be partly because polling shows it’s a popular policy among Americans. An Associated Press poll conducted in March showed 72% of Americans supported voter ID laws.
When leftist political operatives like Quinn Brady attempt to introduce their partisan leanings and alt-left hysterics into legitimate public policy debates, our local citizens should unmask her lies and deceit. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Ms. Brady does not get to reinvent the facts.
72% of Americans Support Voter ID Laws
No Voter Fraud: Require ID When Voting
No Voter Suppression: Count Every Vote
No Partisan Exaggeration: Just the Facts
Progressivism=Socialism=Communism
E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One
Oppose Radicalism: United We Stand
Facts Matter: Speak Truth to Power
Honor the Founding Fathers: Keep America Strong
Quinn Brady is spot on. Just ask most of the rest of the World that been watching and listening to our every move. The fact that over 50 million Americans still support an ex-President who was twice impeached and encouraged his “camp” to overthrow a presidential election by “fighting like Hell” inside the White House speaks volumes. You really don’t need to know much more about it. The old-school hard-liners fearful of being replaced, fearful that their fabricated caste system will be eroded and that Democracy will prevail are correct to be fearful. It may take a few more years but it’s coming – out with the old & in with the new. Thank you Quinn for laying it all on the line. Your Op-Ed is spot on, just as the ones in the past have been!
Having made my living from capitalism, I can confidently say that being anti-racism and anti-bigotry and anti-hate crime does NOT equal being anti-capitalism or (absurd) anti-math.
Those who support the voter suppression movement fail to acknowledge that it is currently illegal in every state in the country to falsify identity upon casting a ballot. It is already considered a serious crime with severe penalties for anyone who casts a ballot under false pretenses. As study after study has shown, our current system is working well and the incidences of voter fraud are minuscule.
Is there anyone reading this who can name a single election in the United States during their lifetime that was swayed because of voters claiming to be someone they were not?
The most significant problem regarding voting is that were not getting enough people to cast votes. The democratic thing to do, The patriotic thing to do, would be to an enact policies that facilitate more of the eligible to be able to legally cast ballots, not less.
Currently we have people who have photo IDs being prohibited from voting because racist poll workers are claiming that their signatures at the polling place do not match signatures on their voter registration documents. Bear in mind that there is no legal requirement that eligible voters must be able to present perfectly identical signatures. Peoples style of signing things change over time for various reasons, and that should not be a reason to deny their right to cast a ballot.
And because of systemic racism, its more often that black voters are denied the opportunity to cast a ballot because racist poll workers say their signatures are not a perfect match.
This is more likely to happen in states other than California, So we should not be surprised that so many Californians are ignorant about the unfair obstacles that are placed in front of voters of color in other states.
Sorry Keith, but I have no interest in supporting Marxism in America or anywhere else. I prefer to support democracy and the optimistic vision for America shared by our new and remarkably effective and compassionate president Joe Biden. It’s wonderful that our nation is in such better shape than it was one year ago. Things are once again looking bright for our nation. No Marxism required. Sorry.
Freedom, equality, abundance, and opportunity are what America is about, anyone who thinks otherwise should go travel the world, then come back and tell the rest of us where the better deal is, it would open up their eyes!
Don’t buy into the false, extreme-left narrative about race hatred and division, it is there attempt to advance their progressive/socialist agenda, we deserve better.
Support America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
United We Stand.