The Morning After

I breathed a sigh the morning after Inauguration Day (perhaps you did too?). Though only 21 days into 2021, this year has already been one marked by so many historic firsts and milestones.

Our first woman, African-American, and South Asian Vice President. Our first openly Gay Cabinet Secretary. Our first Millennial Senator and first Jewish Senator from Georgia. Our first Native American Cabinet Secretary—heading the Department of the Interior, no less. Our first (and truly amazing) Youth Poet Laureate. Our first transgender nominee for Senate confirmation. Our first Latinos to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security.

And on January 20, the Biden/Harris White House issued 17 Executive Orders—the most ever signed on the first day of a new administration. Those orders were a rebuke and reversal of years of unbridled Republican attacks on our civil rights, economic prosperity, and air, water, and lands.

The orders included legislation to protect DACA children; lift the ban on travel from Muslim countries; bring U.S. leadership back into the WHO and Paris Climate Agreement; make science the standard for our response to COVID-19; and declare that there will actually be a coordinated Federal fight against the pandemic, including enacting economic protections from evictions, foreclosures, and student debts.

All this progress was possible because, despite a raging pandemic, a record 81,283,485 Americans voted for the progressive values Biden enumerated in his inauguration speech: opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honor, and, yes, the truth.

Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman also spoke to the steady march of progress, when during “The Hill We Climb,” she read:

However, that precious progress has only been possible when, as Biden noted in his own speech “…enough of us came together to carry all of us forward.”

Let us never forget that this was also the year when America saw its first violent and deadly #CoupAttempt, fomented by the American President himself. How can we unify with those who witnessed the last four years of blatant racism, nativism, misogyny, greed, criminality, and craven indifference to American treasure and blood embodied in DJT (and his crony enablers in the GOP), and yet still chose to vote for him?

Worse, hundreds took up arms and wrapped themselves in the pageantry of the Confederacy, Nazis, and MAGA and QAnon cults as part of a rabid mob seeking to overturn the fair and free results of our elections, and threatening the very foundation and representatives of our Democracy. Still, as I had speculated on January 6, this clusterf*ck of incels was as inept as the orange, Reality TV grifter who tweeted them to insurrection; their deplorable effort was as ineffective as #DonTheCon's 63 failed lawsuits.

Now, those radical extremists and domestic terrorists are facing Federal charges for their crimes against America. But their deep stain on our Democracy remains, and we cannot unify until there is accountability.

But while more than seven million Americans gave Biden the popular win, only 42,844 votes gave him the Electoral College win. Those life-saving votes came from Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona where the margins of victory were the smallest—with 10,457 of them from AZ.

So I write this post today, to acknowledge and honor Sister District Project, Swing Left, the Coconino, Gila, Navajo and Yavapai County Democrats, the Democrats of the Red Rocks, After the March, and all the other groups, individual volunteers and team members who organized and reached out to voters in LD 6. Thank you for letting me breathe a sigh of relief.

But, I’m also writing to bear witness to the ten years of grassroots work of Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight, the New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter, the Georgia People’s Agenda, and countless others, without whom we would not have a Democratic Senate majority. We must look to the example they set and the work they did in the years before the election to mend and strengthen our Democracy. Everyone who took action made the difference, by coming together to carry us ALL forward. So, let’s remember:

Finally, let’s now look ahead to the hills we must still climb, to protect our hard-won progress and truly secure justice and liberty for all.