Democracy Is On The Ballot In 2022. Summer Lee Is Ready For This Fight.

American worried about the battered state of the democracy experiment in this country. You know how President Biden is in. suggested his address Thursday, a year after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol: “We are in a battle for the soul of America, a battle that we will win by the grace of God and the goodness of this nation.”

What they are not sure about is how the defenders of democracy will win this victory.

“This is a hot topic,” said Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania MP who speaks a lot to voters these days as she campaigns for an open seat in the US House of Representatives for the Pittsburgh area. “You can hear it on the ground. People are concerned that democracy is under attack and that Congress is not responding on these issues. People wonder what we’re going to do to make sure things don’t erode. “

As the country paid proper attention to the first anniversary of the Washington insurrection, I turned my attention from the nation’s Capitol and turned to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where Lee was making a progressive bid for the seat of retired US MP Mike Doyle, a veteran democrat. I had seen the CBS News / YouGov poll which found that 66 percent of those polled believe American democracy is under threat. But I was interested in how democracy issues played out in a competitive congressional race in a battlefield state.

There are many in Washington speculation on how democracy debates will affect the 2022 midterm elections. But Lee is at the forefront of the fight to defend the right to vote – and to give people something to vote for. The Pennsylvania activist and lawmaker is an outspoken advocate of economic, social, and racial justice who works for Congress with the support of the Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party for potential voters.

A SETTLEMENT

“We can’t un-know or un-see January 6th,” Lee said to me. “What we are seeing is a strange assumption that our country could descend to that point.”

Lee is a Democrat and has seen the struggles for democracy up close in a state where Trump and his lawyers unsuccessfully challenged post-2020 presidential election results – and where the former president and his allies continue to make unproven claims of “election fraud” in Philadelphia and Philadelphia other urban areas. Not long after last year’s uprising, she was fighting in a Republican-controlled legislature against the GOP’s efforts to enact what she cursed as “Catastrophic constitutional amendment by Gerrymander and functional impeachment of elected judges, disenfranchisement of voters and erosion of controls and contradictions in their favor.”

However, she suggests there is more to this than the Republican embrace of Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election. There is also the challenge of getting Democrats to respond effectively to the GOP’s extreme attitudes and actions.

“I think January 6th showed the overall vulnerability of the Democratic Party to the Republican Party,” she said. “The Republican Party has come down a path. You are committed to a path. The way we react to that will determine how far they go. ”

Lee is not alone in this recognition. Across the country, some of the most dynamic Democrats running in the 2022 midterm election proposed stepping up the fight for democracy on the anniversary of the uprising. They neither turn away from the crisis nor do they suggest compromises in the struggle to defend democratic values. They want to strengthen and grow the messages of the progressives who sit in the House and Senate.

“We know the January 6 riot was not a tourist visit,” said former Kentucky MP Charles Booker, who challenges Republican Senator Rand Paul. Booker devotes the entire week he has declared as “Democracy Week” to explaining why patriotic Kentuckians cannot forgive or forget the actions of Trump apologists like the incumbent. “They knew it was a riot. They knew a lie is fueled. They knew that hatred and racism were used as weapons to tear the thread to democracy. ” he argued. “You can pretend this is all a tourist visit. But that’s a bloody lie. ”

In Wisconsin, state treasurer Sarah Godlewski, one of several Democrats ready to take on Republican Senator Ron Johnson has an elaborate one digital advertising campaign the highlight is the claim of the scandalous incumbent that insurgents were “people who love this country, who really respect the law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law”. She also runs an “End the Damn Filibuster” campaign that wary Democrats are using terrifying news: “If the Republicans retake the Senate, Mitch McConnell and Ron Johnson won’t hesitate to put an end to the filibuster and take over our elections. The Democrats shouldn’t hesitate either. It is time to put an end to the filibuster, restore voting rights and save democracy. We won’t get another chance. “

Lee expressed frustration at the reluctance of many members of Congress to describe not only what happened when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, but also what motivated the rioters.

“I believe the fundamental flaw is that Congress failed to get to the roots of what happened on January 6th to get to the heart of the matter,” the Pennsylvania legislature said. “We can’t confront something if we don’t call it its name.”

The name Lee uses is “white supremacy”. She is not alone in this. Biden said in an October address at an event to celebrate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington that the “violent, deadly uprising at the Capitol nine months ago, in my opinion, was about white supremacy.”

However, while some Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House have recognized the roots of the insurrection, they have not taken the next necessary step to hold allies and supporters of the attack accountable, even as those allied lawmakers continue to advance their racist strategy to Incapacitate colored people at the ballot box.

“Throughout our history we have pampered white racists. We handled white supremacy with kid gloves, ”she explained. “We have to see it as it is. We have to see where these things are coming from. And we have to react on the basis of this understanding. ”

BECOMING SERIOUS WITH RESPONSIBILITY

Above all, according to the 34-year-old Howard University School of Law graduate, it is important to use two standards. If black workers are charged with even minor offenses, they face severe penalties. But powerful politicians, their words and deeds encouraged a fatal attack of Capitol insurgents are still sitting in Congress.

lee tweeted in response to last year’s uprising on the morning of January 7th: “If a black man were to be permanently denied the right to vote for a drug conviction, surely anyone who supports, instigates and / or participates in a riot should achieve legal and democratic goals Overturning election results, trying to be disenfranchised and prevented from ever serving again. ”

As we spoke, she carried out this message.

“This notion that our elected servants or our public servants are of a lower standard is wrong. They should be of a higher standard, ”said Lee. “It is dangerous to have people who are so obviously opposed to what our democracy stands for, who would oppose what our constitution stands for, and still be allowed to serve in public office. If we want to protect the democracy that we have in this country, we have to be serious. ”

To this end, she supports a proposal by MP Cori Bush (D-Mo.) Calling on the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives to determine “whether and should all actions by members of the 117 respect their oath of office, the constitution or the rules of procedure of the House of Representatives expect sanctions, including removal from the House of Representatives. ”As a House Member, Lee would join the 54 supporters of Bush’s plan.

Lee would also add a sense of urgency to debates over whether the federal government should step in to prevent extreme gerrymandering, voter repression, and attempts to overturn election rules and results. The Pennsylvanian did not argue that Democrats must fight harder for democracy.

“That we have a majority and a majority cannot act is wrong,” said Lee. “I’m out and about talking to people and I can tell you they don’t want excuses. You want action. ”

Democracy Is on the Ballot in 2022. Summer Lee Is Ready for This Fight.

A SETTLEMENT

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