Chop Wood, Carry Water 6/30

Hi, all, and happy Friday.

Of course, it isn’t happy. Not for beleaguered student debt holders, not for LGBTQ people, not for BIPOC Americans—not for anyone, in fact, but the billionaire plutocrats running our country and the Christian Nationalists allied with them.

I just got off a call with some very smart people, including messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio, political strategist Mike Podhorzer, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. It was a sobering but ultimately hopeful discussion. I thought I’d share some of it with you.

The sobering part, of course, is the full understanding, cemented by this morning’s rulings, that we are dealing with a captured court. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s true, and the sooner we start using that phrase in every conversation we have about SCOTUS the better.

Senator Whitehouse reminded us that the MAGA justices’ ethics scandals are really only part of the problem. The larger issue is the billionaires pulling their strings—the Leos, the Mercers, the Kochs, the Uhleins. These special interests groups—for that’s what they are—are literally telling justices they have gotten seated which cases to take and which way to rule. (Mike Podhorzer believes that they allowed Moore v. Harper to be decided as it was because they see MAGAs running state legislatures as bad for business. He’s likely right.)

The larger picture, of course, is that we are dealing with encroaching fascism. That’s even more frightening, but denying it is dangerous. This is exactly what fascism looks like. We’re living it. It’s here.

The good news is that we still have a voice, a vote, and a chance to stop these bad actors. Not easily, no, and not quickly. But absolutely, over time, we do. There is no question of that, and we must never forget it, lest we slip into hopelessness or cynicism.

We also have ways to message that increase both voters’ understanding of what’s happening and their desire to join our fight. Anat told us, for example, that when independent voters were given a simple definition of fascism and then reminded that the MAGA GOP showed all of those traits it moved them dramatically towards support of Joe Biden.

Here’s the definition Anat’s team used in their focus groups:

“Fascist" describes a system where a leader or small group of politicians claims power, suppresses opposition and the press, and works to limit people’s freedoms and their ability to have a voice in the political system. These systems often embrace a nationalist ideology and cultural uniformity and compliance, and act out against racial, ethnic or cultural minority groups.

Sound familiar? We’re fighting fascism, y’all. Make sure everyone you know understands it.

There’s so much more to tell, but I can’t fit it all in one newsletter. Let me just remind you of two last things. First, the Dredd Scott decision in 1857, which held that:

“A slave who had resided in a free state and territory was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise, which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional.”

History, of course, now holds this up as a catastrophically bad decision—the textbook example of the Supreme Court getting it wrong. Yet those affected by it at the time could derive no comfort from what “history’s judgement” might be. They had to live with its consequences then—that day. That month. That year. That lifetime, even.

Imagine how Black Americans and their allies must have felt at such a moment. The grief. The betrayal. The sickness in their souls.

Yet, though surely demoralized and enraged, those affected communities did not give up. They persisted. Just as we will.

Today such a ruling seems inconceivable. Sickening. Utterly benighted. There is no disagreement about that among reasonable people. While Dredd Scott was never formally overturned it was effectively superseded by constitutional amendments. There is no universe in which such a ruling is possible today. As bad as things are now, in other words, we must remember that vast progress has been made.

And it will continue to be. As long as we are unafraid to look facts in the face. And the facts are these: we are in a battle for the soul of our country. The MAGA coalition is coming for our freedoms — they want to rule over us. They are using the Supreme Court to do what they could never get done through legislation. Right now it’s working. We can defeat them, but to do so we must fight like hell.

Why? I’ll remind you of this quote, from Frederick Douglass’s “West India Emancipation” speech. Douglass said:

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle…If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

He’s right, of course. It was true then, and it’s true now. Power will concede nothing without a fight.

Know that if you’ve been negatively impacted by one or more of these rulings—it’s likely we all have—I’m sending love and support.

Know also that I am committed to working for as long as it takes to overcome MAGA tyranny. And to undoing the harm that MAGAs on the court have done. I hope you’ll join me.

Today we grieve. Tomorrow we fight.

Jess