Who’s Fighting for America’s Soul?
A few weeks ago, I was at my mechanics’ shop crossing my fingers for a sticker on my Hyundai. The shop is small — just one room with a few extra chairs and a door leading into the garage. I’ve been coming here for years and got to know the owner well — the additional mechanic I didn’t have an opinion on.
That changed when the door to the garage was left open, and I loudly heard the mechanic calling President Joe Biden something unseemly due to his actions in Ukraine.
Just a few days after, I watched President Biden talk about a unified America in the face of COVID. How a unified America “fought for freedom, expanded liberty, defeated totalitarianism and terror” and together we would “save Democracy.”
It’s a direct contradiction to Trump, who claims he and the Republican party are not “the one trying to undermine American democracy”, but the one “ trying to save” it.
With most of Trump’s supporters still subscribing to the Big Lie theory, should Democrats (and America) play pretend to help efforts in 2022 and 2024?
Masks
Pre-COVID, most parents considered school board meetings were mostly uneventful. Meetings shaped the school’s structure in the upcoming year, with input from parents, teachers, and superintendents. Previously, meetings had only become contentious when updating curriculum or when budget money was being allocated across school programs.
When mask mandates were kicked down the road from Governors to individual school districts, that’s when the meetings got out of control.
Baltimore school districts kept their mask mandate in place, while general indoor mask mandates were lifted. The school’s administrative departments took in recommendations made by the Health Department and decided optional masking was not the best option for over 80,000 students and staff. In New York, where masking was made optional on March 2, students showed up in a mix of masked and unmasked faces. Conflict and daily complaints about the mandate led to this updated policy, with school districts emphasizing the importance of respecting classmates and admins. The Nyak Superintendent released a video in English, with additional Haitian-Creole and Spanish subtitles highlighting the importance of being “kind, respectful, and supportive” of each person’s decision to wear or not wear a mask.
(If only Trump had taken that advice in September of 2020 when he cited Biden’s mask-wearing as a psychological “big issue”. The “joke” came the day after the US topped 185,000 deaths from COVID-19.)
The National School Board Association has represented school boards since 1940 and often flies under the radar. Recently, the board asked the Biden administration to start investigating the continuing disruption and threats against school board members. The N.S.B.A. requested Biden to use executive authority and “other extraordinary measures” to handle hostile actions at meetings.
In Kennebeck, Maine, a school board meeting was interrupted and then canceled due to behavior from attendees. After facing difficulties of reaching an agreement on masking in the meeting, an agreement was finally made that masks only had to be worn while sitting in the audience, not while speaking at the podium. Questions related to students’ disabilities (like hearing-impaired children not being able to read lips) were drowned out by adults determined to stop the businesses of the board. Art LeBlanc, school board chair, called an end to the session after an unknown man came up to the podium. The heated exchange ended with the unnamed man telling LeBlanc and the board “don’t tell me how it works, I’m telling you how it works. I pay taxes”.
With the extreme divisiveness in these meetings, communities are continuing to divide themselves into two camps. Monica Stegman of Michigan expressed her concern about the “my way of thinking, and you have to follow” way of thinking the opposite side has taken. Her concern was validated by another parent in the community, who explained that “the message is clear. The board of Education and Dan [Behm] does not support the side of medical freedom of choice.”
Candidates
Not only did school board meetings used to be boring — school board races were, too. Katy Mulkerin, a former student, educator, and current mom planned on running uncontested when she announced her candidacy for the open Walla Walla School Board Directors seat. “Then CRT began to come up in the community, and I knew I would have an opponent”, she explained to the Brown Girls Guide to Politics. The race ended up gaining national attention, with criticisms of where Kathy’s money for her race was coming from. In a town of around 33 thousand people, Kathy hired a social media consultant and shut her social media down. In the end, she emerged victorious, beating out her opponent with a racist past by almost two points to represent a district comprised of 46% students of color. “I channeled our Vice President, Kamala Harris it that moment,” she explained, discussing her swearing-in. “I was the first [bi-racial person of color to be elected] but I won’t be the last.”
With Kathy’s win sadly comes a slew of Bie Lie candidates — some already touting Trump’s endorsement. Tina Peters — yes, that Tina Peters who was arrested for allegedly illegally recording a court proceeding involving her deputy clerk’s burglary and cybercrimes- filed to run for Secretary of State in Colorado. If she wins, she’ll have partial power over elections. Peters built her success off of election conspiracy and announced her campaign for Secretary of State on Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Steve Bannon is still playing a key role alongside Trump’s baseless election claims, and launched a podcast that will be a “platform for MAGA”. Bannon claimed he wouldn’t personally make endorsements, but did want to highlight MAGA candidates. The candidates could include Tim Ramthun, who was unknown to the Wisconsin GOP until he started the charge against Biden’s victory in Wisconsin. The newfound popularity led him to announce his campaign for Wisconsin Governor on Tuesday.
Federal offices aren’t exempt from Big Lie candidates. Josh Mandel, running for US Senate in Ohio, made that clear at his CPAC speech in Florida. In front of thousands at CPAC in early February, he claimed that the country has “Democrats who think it’s okay to cheat in elections.” Continuing, he explained to supporters that “one of the most important fights of our day is to stop the cheating from the left.”
(There was no cheating in the 2020 election.)
Local election officials are ringing the bell to tell governments that they don’t have enough money to efficiently run elections during the midterms or even the next presidential election. In 2020, election officials faced physical and death threats for doing their job. One Detroit official, after relentless personal attacks, started carrying a 22 caliber. “The gun is hard, but I do it because I have to protect myself,” explained Janice Winfrey, 63. Winfrey is one of the stronger ones who are sticking around for the next round of elections. Trump’s calls to threaten and intimidate poll workers are working, and 1 out of 5 officials plan to quit before 2024.
The Big Lie
The Big Lie was the main point of CPAC, held in Florida. At this conference, common ideas revolved around Clinton’s campaign spying on Trump (they didn’t), January 6th was a heroic event, those who stormed the Capitol are heroes, and boos from the crowd come from the mention of Anthony Fauci, Justin Trudeau, and Black Lives Matter. The biggest common ideal bringing them together was the rigged election of 2020 and that our election system is under attack. Big Lie promoter and believer Tom Freeman, 66, explained that fraud in 2020 “is real, it’s huge, it’s millions of fraudulent votes. Democracy is under assault due to illegal immigrants and voter fraud and manipulation of a systematic level.”
(Again, 2020 wasn’t rigged. Trump just lost, fair and square.)
These unfounded election fraud claims (as well as a critically undercounted 2020 census) give Republican lawmakers free reign of the redistricting pen. North Carolina’s Supreme Court ordered Republicans to re-draw voting maps after it heavily favored Republicans winning 10 or 11 out of the 14 vacant seats. Florida, where CPAC was held, also had to redraw their maps after completing new boundaries for the state’s 40 Senate seats and 120 House seats.
Mandel, a candidate for Ohio Senate, told Big Lie believers that he wanted to “say this very clearly and directly. I believe the election was stolen from Donald J Trump.” He continued to build his case against the left — structuring the narrative that conservatives are fighting for a righteous cause — in defense of the “real America”. Mandel continued to spread the rumor that an unelected leftist minority is controlling schools, universities, mainstream media, and big tech giants in Silicon Valley.
Michelle Van Allensburg, whose child is enrolled in Forest Hills Public High School in Michigan, disagreed in an unrelated school board meeting. She has been one of the parents who showed up to defend teachers and admins. During the open comment section, she expressed that she can “voice for my children’s teachers and they have never been sent home with pornography. I’ve never seen hidden messages in my kid’s fractions or multiplication tables, and my kids have no idea what CRT is. They also have never been taught to feel shame about having white skin.”
The frightening reality is that one-third of Americans still think that the election was rigged in 2020.
So — What’s Next?
One solution to many Democrats’ election issues is to turn the focus on building relationships in rural communities. In Oxford County, where I grew up, there was a dramatic shift in voting patterns from 2008 to 2020. I have memories of busy County Democrat meetings with Democratic representatives updating constituents on progressive bills making their way through Maine’s legislature, and always had the support of the local paper mill union. In 2008, Oxford County voted 56.58% Democratic, assisting to place Barack Obama in office. As Republicans consistently turned out to the midterms (resulting in a three-way split vote in 2010, placing Paul LePage in the corner office with only 38% of the vote), Democrats slowly began to lose ground. In 2012, when nationally, Democrats regained control of the Senate and Obama reelected, Democratic support in Oxford County slipped to 55.51%. In 2016, easily the most contentious election in history, Democrats lost their grip on Oxford County. Republicans won the county by 51.95% and handed the second Congressional District to Donald Trump.
Stacy Abrams, past Georgia representative, a two-time candidate for Governor (and so much more) created Fair Fight for Voting Rights to combat the rampant disinformation spread in Georgia. Abraham’s work in Georgia was crucial for Biden to win the state and then delivered two Democratic Senators in a special election runoff in January. Fair Fight uses multiple approaches to fight disinformation and racist voting practices. In 2018, Fair Fight lawsuit against the Secretary of State’s office for the mismanagement of 2018’s midterm by disenfranchising non-white voters. Fair Fight has also worked to expose corrupt legislation working to the Governor’s desk, connecting a robust network of grasstop volunteers who hold Georgia’s legislature accountable. The organization utilizes digital tools to let Georgians know their information is part of Georgia’s annual voter purge. You can donate to Fair Fight for Voting Rights here, and Stacy Abrams Gubernatorial race here.
We gained a victory with Biden sitting in the White House — but there’s still so much work to be done. National groups like the Sunrise Movement, which focuses on stopping climate change through community-based organizing, focus on holding Biden accountable to environmental promises made in the 2020 campaign. Sunrise has a list of (fair) demands from the White House after helping hand Biden a victory in November. The Movement endorsed Bernie Sanders earlier in the 2020 primary, focusing on Sanders’ monumental Green New Deal. After Sanders suspended his campaign, the Movement called the moment “demoralizing”, but pivoted to how they convinced Biden to re-write his climate plan after he saw the impact of Sunrise with Sanders. Their actions go beyond Presidential organizing, and currently are hosting phonebanks to elect climate champion Jessica Cisneros of Texas.
Lastly — Democrats need boots on the ground. Face-to-face and community-based organizing is the key to winning the areas Democrats had such a poor showing in 2016. Campaigns cost money between ad spends, office space, and trained staff. Groups like Vote Save America created the Adopt-A-Stae program in the last election, utilizing Crooked Media listeners to dial voters in crucial states. Vote Save America has an entire database set up with campaign-related jobs for those interested in making campaigning a full-time career. Vote Save America knows 2022 matters — are you in?
Disinformation about the 2022 midterms is already starting. Our work is far from over — amending the harm from the Trump administration takes coordination on all levels.
It starts with agreeing that we’re not on the same page.
