HBCU Pride

This week, even as the new Biden-Harris administration continues to tackle the urgent crises of the pandemic and the economic travails, the U. S. Senate is taking time to attend to the equally pressing matter of trying former President Donald J. Trump of the United States on a charge of incitement to insurrection. Firstly, no one should ever be allowed to commit the egregious and deadly acts that the former president stands correctly accused of committing, namely of purposefully gathering and inciting a mob with the expressed purpose of upending an election, subverting democracy, and threatening members of Congress and his own vice president. We need to let those future generations know that there were people who insisted on planting a marker here and now that what occurred on January 6th and in the days leading up to it was morally reprehensible and utterly at odds with the democratic principles this nation holds dear. If Trump fails to be convicted because the U. S. Senate says that a president can’t be impeached after they leave office, it sets a precedent for future despots: nothing you do in your final few weeks is punishable by anybody in any way.

Here are seven reforms that would safeguard our democracy: ►We call for the updating of the Electoral Count Act so that members of Congress from both parties are dissuaded in the future from attempting to consider competing slates of electors by invoking this 1887 law. ►Congress should establish a more regular stream of funding for elections via the Election Assistance Commission so states and localities do not need to rely on private philanthropy and corporations for election costs in the future. ►We further urge Congress to review the Ethics in Government Act as well as the Hatch Act to ensure the appropriate application of their provisions to a president’s political activities as well as those of federal or presidentially appointed employees on behalf of the president. The Republican Party and Democratic Party — as well as parties like the Green Party, Libertarian Party and Constitution Party — should refuse to financially support candidates who lie about the integrity of an election or our electoral system.

The U. S. capital had to plead for help from the National Guard to defend itself against the deadly Jan. 6 attack by white nationalists and other racist, extremist groups invited here by former President Donald Trump and his ardent defenders. Amazingly, there are still millions of people who feel the Capitol protesters were rightly aggrieved, their violence justified by Trump’s lie of a supposed stolen election, even though 60 court rulings by 90 judges — many of whom Trump appointed — found the claims were without merit. Instead, African Americans led a “revolt without violence,” as Dr. Martin Luther King called it in a March 1960 interview with U. S. News & World Report about budding protests and sit-ins in the South. Instead, as he said in that 1960 interview, “I have advised all along that we follow a path of nonviolence, because, if we ever succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of the long and desolate night of bitterness — and our aim is not to defeat or to humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.

History was made, from record turnout amid a global pandemic, to the record 81 million votes won by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, to the Jan. 5 Georgia runoff elections won by a pair of Democrats sworn in to the Senate on Wednesday by Vice President Harris. The long 2020 campaign season finally ended amid the high drama of Georgians choosing Rev. Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s first Black senator, and Jon Ossoff, a 33-year-old millennial. Specifically, relative to the 2020 general election, the largest turnout increases in Democratic support in the 2021 Senate runoff elections came from the Black Belt counties of southwestern Georgia. And it didn’t hurt that Trump and his allies kept attacking voting by mail and Georgia Republicans — including the governor, their own runoff candidates and state voting officialswho fended off possibly criminal attempts by Trump to “find” enough votes to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

It’s also a recognition of women of color and the strength of our democracy — especially on the centennial anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ election is a recognition of the more than 81 million Americans who voted not based on gender or color, but rather on qualifications, and who stood up for America’s core principles of inclusion and merit. While some may be uncomfortable with seeing a woman in such a highly visible leadership role, I firmly believe that millions more Americans are ready to see an authentic and wise leader who will help lead this great country. Here I stand as a grateful American and a grateful Black woman who proudly recognizes that, in my lifetime, I have finally seen what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us was possible simply if we had access to the ballot box.

Because despite the fact that the Democratic Party now controls the White House, the Senate, and the House, the Republican Party also has an essential role to play in rebuilding itself and reuniting our country. But President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris cannot fully and effectively serve and protect everyone in our nation if the Republican Party does not finally and unequivocally reject Trump’s lies and division. Republican leaders have an obligation to heal their party and help heal our nation by extinguishing the flames of hatred for fellow Americans that Trump lit. Republican leaders at the federal, state and local levels must finally accept Trump’s election defeat and move on to the critical work of bringing our country back from the brink of insurrection and ushering us into an era of post-pandemic hope and unity.

Whether he accepts defeat or not, Donald Trump’s presidency will become history at noon on Jan. 20, when former Vice President Joe Biden becomes our nation’s leader. As President Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden persuaded three Republican senators to support an economic stimulus bill in 2009 that helped end the Great Recession. Since Biden’s victory, the question I’ve been asked most often by my friends on the right and the left is: Will Republicans heed the president-elect’s heartfelt call to work together? And now our soon-to-be president and vice president must be given the leeway to choose their nominees for Cabinet posts – and the Senate must act swiftly to confirm these nominees – so that the new administration will be ready on Day One to respond to these dire threats to our health and safety.

But it’s more than Dinkins’ time as mayor of New York City that defines him and the “greatest generation” of Black leaders from New York. The People’s Pastor,” who founded the African People’s Christian Organization and the National Black United Front,  and, like us, worked on the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign. Dinkins and the incredible constellation of Black elected officials, community and religious leaders, and civil rights activists of his generation paved the way for future Black leaders in New York, including U. S. Reps. Ed Towns, Major Owens, Floyd Flake, Gregory Meeks, Yvette Clarke and Hakeem Jeffries, along with current state Attorney General  Letitia James,. Dinkins’s legacy lives on in the election of Kamala Harris to become America’s first Black, South Asian and female vice president.

As diligently as we organized to make a plan to vote and to get to the polls to support our favored candidates, we must now ensure that the constitutional process of counting our votes moves forward, and we must remain both calm and vigilant while all of our votes are counted — and recounted. Simply put, if we could hold free and fair elections during the 1918 influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, and two world wars, then we must trust that the electoral process will remain free and fair today, too. In 2008, while the rest of the country had moved past the presidential election, Georgians took to the polls again to make their voices heard in an important U. S. Senate runoff. And now, counting every vote is the regular upkeep that ensures our homes stand — until the next election, when we can make our voices heard again to protect our democracy and our home, our great country.

Let us be the nation that we know we can be, a nation united.” Invoking biblical references, Biden made it clear that he will be a president who heals not only the divisions in our country but responds effectively with science and sound public health measures to heal America from the terrible coronavirus pandemic and put it behind us. Biden and Harris struck just the right tone in pledging to bring all Americans together at a time when we are perhaps more divided than at any point since the Civil War. And it’s a moment in the almost 250-year history of our country that has been a long time coming for me and my fellow African American sisters and brothers. Soon President Biden and Vice President Harris will be leading our nation, bringing us together, and building better tomorrows for all of us alive today and for generations unborn.