Monday, November 9, 2020

A BRAND NEW DAY?

 

The best representation for me of the announcement Saturday, November 7, 2020, was a meme that depicted three African American females. The caption reads "Rosa sat so Ruby could walk and Kamala could run".

 It of course, references the courage of Rosa Parks who in 1955, after a long day refused to give up her seat to a white man in the "Colored section" of the bus as the white section was full. She is called the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Ruby Bridges was that little girl, escorted by federal marshalls, who become the first African American child to desegretate a Louisville school in 1960 and remains an activist for civil rights.  230 years after becoming a country, and 100 years after granting the vote to African American men and women, in 2020 Kamala Harris was named Vice-President elect of the United States. 

It should be commonplace and routine by now that any gender or color can ascend to the highest offices in the nation on an equal playing field and yet it took until 2020. Well this is not Horatio Alger world and the racism and sexism that has prevailed for so long has been answered with a resounding click of Kamala's 3-inch heels. Of course it's only a start and I am the first to say one has to perform and deliver. This is not a "token" assignment. This was hard-fought, hard won and we expect results, as this is only a beginning, I hope, of equal rights for all.

However the reverberations of the disappointed losers are continuing to resonate. The cries of "cheating and fraud" are disingenuous to say the least. In their fear that Freedom might actually ring after all, the Repubs hi-jacked the Post Office to slow delivery (that may end up in jail time for the Trump appointee); only allowed one ballot box per county in Texas; disenfranchised folks in Florida who had paid their debt to society; brought multiple lawsuits to stop absentee ballots; threatened both voters and poll workers; and closed so many polling places throughout the South (since the Supremes struck down the Fair Voting Act) it forced folks to wait in line for hours to vote. But they were committed to having their voices heard. Finally for this massive scheme to work the 100's and 1000's of Secretarys of State, poll workers, vote counters, observers (of both parties) would all have to "be in on the scam". Amazing logistics to pull that one off.  

2020 has not been particularly genteel and there have been a lot of issues to protest. But at least when it comes to protesting the results of an election, in 2016 protesters sported pink pussy hats not pistols and long guns while whining "it's not fair boo hoo" in a cowardly attempt to intimidate. Don't tread on me indeed.



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