For days I’ve tried to focus on New Years resolutions, but they keep fading in the national, local and health-related turmoil around us.
I already have good intentions for 2022. What I’m missing is instructions.
What’s going on? What can I do about it?
This Tuesday Heather Cox Richardson said that we can recognize where we are today by learning how the same situation played out earlier in American history. If we don’t, we won’t have a choice about where we go next.
[If] you think about what is happening in this moment as something entirely new, you think, ‘Well it won’t really happen’. [But today’s situation] is exactly what former Confederates and white supremacists did in the American south in the 1870’s to guarantee that white people would rule the south. And they did, between the 1870’s and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the 1870’s how did so many Americans allow a small group of wealthy men take charge of our government? How did the same thing happen in the 2000’s? In both cases these Americans were taken in by a constructed, false national narrative.
What is the narrative that we need to replace today?
The Republicans who took power in our day did it by commandeering the public discourse, by making sure the American people voted a certain way, talked a certain way, and supported a certain kind of politician who worked for the wealthy, whose wealth was not always fairly gotten. [Their version of America] was characterized by individual liberty; being a community organizer was somehow disparaging; we weren’t supposed to help each other out; everything was supposed to work best if we were only out for ourselves; laws were only supposed to support the makers and not the takers. And people echoed this worldview perhaps unthinkingly.
I believe that changing that narrative is the key to changing our country.
How do we change this narrative? We have until November to protect American democracy by electing to Congress people who will protect our right to vote and our two-party system.
In the 1890’s ordinary American middle-class citizens and workers began to fight back. They were angry enough and loud enough to get the attention of, and to elect, politicians who in turn began to dismantle the government that worked only for the wealthy.
Today we can do the same.
Call your Senators [to support] a carve-out in the filibuster for any kind of voting rights. You can say, ‘Until the early 2000’s you supported these things. What’s changed? We want to know our vote is protected.’ … And if they’re doing a good job, tell them so.
We need to speak up [about what the Biden administration is doing right]. Say, “I like it that I got a child tax credit,” for example.
What made a difference in the 1890’s were the people who had been silent before. When they started to talk up, politicians started to make changes.
I think what Richardson is telling us is that we don’t have to wait until we’ve lost our voting rights, our two-party system and fair laws, to change the public narrative. We can pressure Senators now to pass voting rights laws.
“Remember,” she says,
You won’t convince everyone, but we only need 51% and fair [voting] laws.
So, what is my New Years resolution? It is to do what I can for American democracy in 2022. I will say to everyone who is uncertain, “Think what our democracy does for you. Would you miss it?”