Progress in this country never comes easy or quick. For every few hard-earned steps forward, we might stumble a couple steps back. But sometimes, the slow, steady effort of generations is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.
That’s exactly what happened in a remarkable sprint of history ten years ago this week. The Supreme Court upheld a critical part of the Affordable Care Act. A day later, it recognized a Constitutional right to marriage equality. And that same afternoon, a congregation in Charleston, still reeling from a horrifying act of racial violence but fortified by the extraordinary courage of ordinary friends and neighbors, led the country in a chorus of Amazing Grace.
It was a week that reasserted our freedoms. The freedom from fear that random illness or accident could cost us everything. The freedom to marry who we love. The freedom intrinsic to a people who, even when we lose our way, are never bound to the past – but rather great precisely because we can change.
Progress in this country is never guaranteed, either. But that week, it felt like the efforts of so many, across generations, was bending the arc of the moral universe a little more towards justice. I recently sat down with @GarrisonH to talk about that day, and what it can teach all of us about how change happens.
Protests erupted on Wednesday in Nashville as Republicans in Tennessee raced to slice up their state's sole Democratic district covering the majority-Black city of Memphis.
Mother Jones’s @garrisonh is on the ground at the State Capitol covering the upheaval. He spoke with State Representative @justinjpearson , a Democrat, amid the din of protesters who had arrived to voice their disdain during proceedings, shouting, “Hands off Memphis!”
Pearson emphasized the historic gravity of the move.
"This isn't coincidental or accidental," he said. "They're coming for Black political power in Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana. We're seeing the greatest purge of Black power since the era of Reconstruction."
The Supreme Court’s decision to gut the voting rights act this week was a blow to multiracial democracy. The question is not if, but when and how we will fight back.
.
Follow @garrisonh for more.
I spent a day talking to people who oppose birthright citizenship and it was... interesting.
.
Shoutout to the @aclu_nationwide for the invitation. #aclupartner
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a REAL ONE ✊🏾✊🏾
.
Follow @garrisonh for more!
.
.
Also!! I’m nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Comment “Vote” and I’ll send you a link to vote for me. You can vote once per day through February 13!
HONORED to be nominated for my very first NAACP Image Award! @naacpimageawards
Comment “Vote” and I’ll send you a DM with a link to cast your vote for me! As you’ll see, I’m nominated alongside some of my favorite (!!) people in this work. Thank you all for the support! I grew up watching the NAACP Image Awards, so to be a part of that history means so much to me 🤯
The reality is that, historically speaking, we are all in this together whether we like it or not.
My thoughts are with the family of Renee Nicole Good and the people of Minneapolis.
.
.
Follow @garrisonh for more.
Shout out to ProPublica for uncovering this insane story, and to Democracy Forward for bringing it to my attention. This is satire, but corruption is no joke. We deserve better.
