Juneteenth and January 6
This week, two moments in a singular story: the ongoing struggle between those who believe in equality before the law and those who believe in the right of an elite group to govern the rest.
Dear friends:
This weekend is Juneteenth, a national holiday to mark the end of legal chattel slavery on our territory. It coincides with the illumination of the Republican attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, two moments in a singular story: the ongoing struggle between those who believe in equality before the law and those who believe in the right of an elite group to govern the rest.
We have learned that the previous president’s closest and most trusted advisors advanced a scheme to keep him in power that they knew to be illegal and unconstitutional. They knowingly lied to the public while admitting in private the illegality of their plan. We have learned that the previous president could not have escaped knowledge that the plan was illegal and unconstitutional, and yet he continues to promote it.
We have seen and heard the words he used to inflame the rioters at the Capitol on January 6, words that could easily have resulted in the murders of political leaders, including his own vice president. We have seen the vice president refuse to get into a Secret Service car, uncertain of whether he could trust the driver.
Much of this, we knew before. Some is new. But all of it lands with brutal clarity: the cold calculation of it, the wanton willingness to upturn nearly two hundred and fifty years of commitment to peaceful transition of power, as if it barely mattered, as if it was just another phase of the long con that was the 45th presidency, playing out to see how far they could go.
And the casual encouragement of the violent, white supremacist paramilitary groups in their fantasy of a “new 1776” as they destroyed property, attacked Capitol police officers, and marched through the halls seeking those deemed traitors. The cynical willingness to wait, quietly, as hundreds of public servants huddled in terror, listening to the chants and footsteps of the mob.
They were determined to remain in power: some, certainly, for reasons of selfish greed. Some, perhaps, out of the misguided belief that they were guardians of an idyllic America that would not survive without them. But all put their determination to keep power above all else: above the lives of those in the Capitol, above the oaths they swore to the Constitution, and above the ideals of the country they claim to love.
As the Civil War showed, as the Articles of Secession filed by Confederate states demonstrated, as the Jim Crow South, the Civil Rights struggle, the fights for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights and fair labor laws and environmental justice and health care for all and product safety and all the basic protections of a civil society prove, over and over again: this country’s history is the result of an ongoing battle for equity over elitism. Our nation was born of an idea of equal rights that was never intended to include all, but the power of that idea has grown well beyond the elite white men who penned the Constitution.
Some folk want to restrict us back to the notion that only wealthy white men can make the best decisions for the rest of us. Their ideas have deep roots in our society.
But somehow, against tremendous odds, the idea of equality before the law has won its day over and over again. There is no ultimate victory, no moment we can say “there, we no longer have to work.” There is, however, great power ready to be harnessed in all our gorgeous, diverse, thoroughly valuable human family.
Because the deepest roots of all are those that connect us to one another and to our beautiful planet. No human action can sever them completely. Our connection is the most permanent thing about us.
Be safe and well, take heart, and take action to save our precious democracy.