Martin Luther King Jr was a proponent for and defender of democracy. In 1963 Dr. King was incarcerated in a Birmingham jail where he wrote, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”
Last week we saw Dr. King’s words crawl into reality when Senators Sinema and Manchin killed, possibly, the last hope for voting rights protection across the United States.
Instead of standing up for the core democratic right to vote the two senators defended artificial senate ‘order’. Last week Sinema and Manchin had the opportunity to grant protection at the polls for every American no matter their color or religion. Last week these two could have strengthened our fragile democracy by negating the partisan statewide efforts to marginalize blocks of voters. Last week these two privileged white people could have placed all Americans on the same political level.
Instead, Sinema and Manchin, gave the Republican Cult free reign to restrict voting with new ‘Jim Crow’ laws affecting Democrats of color. What Sinema and Manchin accomplished was paving the way for Republican Cult states to rig the counting of votes in future elections. In their blind adherence to an artificial Senate ‘order’ they gave the Senatorial Republican Cult white ruling class the freedom to continue dismantling democratic norms. Sinema and Manchin have removed one of the last hopes for democracy’s survival during the ongoing insurrection.
Instead of choosing to further the pro-democracy work of Martin Luther King Jr. Sinema and Manchin have left the tools necessary to dismantle democracy in the hands of the Republican Cult.
There is still some hope for the forces of democracy to overcome and walk hand in hand as a nation. But that hope was struck a critical blow last week by Sinema and Manchin.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right, and this is a sad day in American history.
See you next time.
oheckman 