Democracy--we can do stuff!
Here's who we can work with! Plus wisdom from ancestors on preserving democracy
Since this is the final week of this series on democracy, I want to let you know about some organizations who have active campaigns to preserve democracy in the United States.
Fair Fight, founded by Stacy Abrams, works on protecting voting rights. (Also, if you want to understand basic civics issues like redistricting and how a bill becomes a law, they have a fabulous youtube series with short videos!)
The Brennan Center for Justice and League of Women Voters are both nonpartisan organizations working on voting rights among other issues.
Common Cause and Project Democracy work on government transparency and preserving democracy against autocratic efforts.
I’ve tried during this series to name ways democracy is being chipped away at, while acknowledging it wasn’t perfect to begin with. Please don’t hear me say that we should sacrifice our efforts for justice in order to preserve democracy, but this matters as part of our work for justice right now because authoritarian states never yield more justice.
Maybe, like me, you’ve taken democracy for granted as long as you’ve been in this country. Maybe the rollbacks haven’t affected you directly, or they’ve been in place for so long you haven’t really tasted real and observable democracy. And at the same time, this is a pretty important moment in the life of our nation. I hope you’ll join me in working to preserve democracy, by connecting with one of these organizations or simply talking with your friends about how real this threat is. Thanks for doing the work, friend.
The history of democracy, through a constitutional lens
As we wrap up this month on democracy, I want to talk about the 14th amendment. I listened to a really great podcast episode on Throughline, and it really nailed a very clear amendment with a really complicated history. Phrases like “equal protection” and “due process” come from it, and at core, it has worked as well as our court justices have been willing to interpret it.
There’s a wild case from South Carolina in 1947. Clarendon County has 30 buses for white schools and none for Black schools. The parents petition for buses, and get rejected. They use a retired bus and petition for gas money. Nothing. Thurgood Marshall is taking the case to the federal court and a South Carolina justice says, “we’ve seen so many cases where you’re trying to get separate but equal…if you go after segregation itself, you’ll lose but I’ll write the dissent, and you can take it to the Supreme Court.” This case and several like it become the foundation for Brown v Board, which said Separate but Equal was inherently unequal, based on the 14th amendment—a broad interpretation.
However, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the court NARROWED the definition of the 14th amendment by upholding racist state laws saying it would be inappropriate for the federal government to dictate state governance, including things like poll taxes and literacy tests for voting.
If you’ve been paying attention to the Supreme Court this year, you might think of other ways the court is narrowing the 14th amendment, an amendment which is key to how our democracy works for EVERYONE.
As an aside, I’ve been interested in the 14th amendment for a long time, particularly since one of the very first times it was tested in the court was by Asian Americans testing the “equal protection” clause. I wrote about that case, Yick Wo v Hopkins, several years ago in the Asian American Christian magazine Inheritance, if you’re interested in a theological take on the case, as well as a reflection on how many Asian American rights in this country have come to us because of Black people’s liberation struggles.
Spotlight on pro-democracy ancestor:
In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman to serve in Congress, and in 1972 became the first Black woman to run for President. She fought for government accountability and transparency in relation to her work for racial, gender, and economic equality. One of my favorite quotes from her is,
Of course laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings.
But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws —
to perpetuate injustice through inaction.
She said this when advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment to resolve the complex quagmire of laws about women’s rights, but it applies to pretty much all of democracy these days, so I wanted to share it to ground us for the work ahead, supported by a brilliant and visionary ancestor in order to carry on her work.
I started thinking about her again when during the pandemic my mother and I co-watched the TV series “Mrs America” about Phyllis Schlafly and Gloria Steinem. Episode three of the show (available on Hulu) is specifically about Shirley Chisholm’s presidential bid and who stood by her and who horse-traded her away for political promises that would never actually be met by the ultimate Democratic party candidate.
In light of the centennial of her birth and in light of the 2024 election, the Museum of New York City is featuring a retrospective on her life through early 2025, which I might try to catch while I’m in Philadelphia. Chisholm saw democracy as a means of preserving equality for immigrants, women, and people of color in addition to those who were already protected by it. That work remains as relevant, and sadly as controversial, as it was when she was first elected to Congress in 1968.
created by Joe Crawford and posted on his flickr account