On the Knife's Edge of Democracy
If Tennessee shows us how much work there is left to do, Wisconsin shows us that it's possible.
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And now what you all came here for:
Last week was a really good one in Wisconsin. Judge Janet Protasiewitz won her election to the Wisconsin State Supreme Court by 11 points. With her win, the balance of the court shifts to progressives for the first time in 15 years. Abortion rights were front of mind heading into this election for a lot of voters, as Wisconsin has a ban on the books from 1849 that will almost certainly come up in front of the new court. But this was also a huge win for democracy. Dan Kelly, Protasciewitz’s opponent, was a key architect of the plan to overturn the 2020 election. Wisconsin promises to be one of the closest states in 2024 - having election deniers in control of the Supreme Court could have been catastrophic.
It’s not just national aspirations where democracy is at stake. Wisconsin is a 50-50 state, a coin flip in most presidential elections between Republicans and Democrats. But it is also one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country. Republicans have 6 of 8 seats in the House of Representatives and the state legislature is split 65% Republican and 35% Democrat. Electing Janet Protasiewitz to the Supreme Court in Wisconsin won’t automatically fix all of this, but it is a key step to untangling the web of gerrymandering and voter suppression that has kept Wisconsin so undemocratic for so long.
This was nothing short of a pivotal victory for Wisconsin and an essential one for the country. And with the strength of a year round organizing program and a huge investment from volunteers in Wisconsin and all over the country, we did it!1
It was a great way to start the week, because unfortunately things got quite a bit messier after that.
On Thursday, two of three members who protested for gun control on the floor of the Tennessee legislature were expelled from the Republican led Tennessee House of Representatives. The two members who were expelled were young Black men, while the vote to expel their fellow protester, an older white woman, failed by a few votes. As an isolated incident that was clearly both anti-democratic and racist, it would have been horrifying enough. But these members were protesting with young people fighting for their lives after yet another mass shooting at a school killed 6 people, including three nine year olds. Yes, you read that right. Nine year olds. This protest was enough for their Republican colleagues to vote to expel two Black men from their legislature. But the list of things that have not led to expulsion from the Tennessee state legislature include sexual assault, racist jokes about lynching, peeing on a fellow legislators chair, and federal investigations into bribery.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, state Representative Tricia Cotham, who won her district as a Democrat by 20 points, announced she was switching parties, handing Republicans in North Carolina a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature. Her turning point, she claims, was criticism she received for using the American flag and praying hands emojis in her social media platforms. It’s hard to imagine holding your beliefs in bodily autonomy, civil rights, and democracy so loosely that some rude twitter replies would be enough to make you betray them. It’s even harder to imagine handing this much power to a party with an avowed interest in destroying everything you appear to have worked for for over a decade. The people of her district did not elect a Republican who would vote to restrict abortion and queer rights, make it easier to get guns and harder to vote. They elected a Democrat who hid that she was so weak-willed and untrustworthy that she betrayed everything she claimed to stand for over emojis.
And on Friday, two federal judges issued dueling rulings on the abortion drug mifepristone. A Trump appointee declared the FDA’s 2000 approval of this drug invalid, and just an hour later a different federal judge out of Washington state blocked the FDA’s ability to stop approving the drug. Letting federal judges with no medical background rule on the FDA’s 23 year old approval of a drug in the first place is insane. But ending this roller coaster of a week with separate and contradicting rulings from two different federal judges on a drug that has been approved and in circulation for over twenty years might be a bit too much.
It’s easy to look at a week like this and unravel - we’re taking one step forward and two steps back and it feels like our democracy is getting smaller and our wins are getting overshadowed by the sheer magnitude of what we’re up against.
But if Tennessee and North Carolina show us how much we have left to do, Wisconsin shows us that it’s possible. Wisconsin didn’t change overnight. Janet Protasiewitz’s victory did not come out of nowhere. Democracy won in Wisconsin because we never stopped fighting. We invested in elections that we lost. People showed up at protests that weren’t successful. When something failed, organizers and activists learned from it and tried again.
There are of course unique challenges in states like Tennessee and North Carolina, legacies of Jim Crow era politics that don’t allow citizens to initiate ballot measures and gerrymandering that has made balanced state legislatures more and more difficult. This is particularly egregious in North Carolina, where Republicans have managed a supermajority in a state that continues to elect a Democratic governor.
But in Tennessee, legislators were expelled for standing up with young people making themselves heard and fighting for their safety. In every one of these states where democracy seems out of reach, there are people fighting for their rights, fighting for their homes and their friends and their families. Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington, bought a three year supply of mifepristone to ensure that they could continue supplying health care facilities and pharmacies in the state. In every one of these stories there are people and organizations doing the brutally hard but important work that leads to the kind of victories we saw in Wisconsin on Tuesday night.
It feels like we’re on the knife’s edge of democracy, a coin flip or a light breeze away from falling down the wrong side. But there’s no such thing as a fucked/not fucked binary. Everything we do to protect our rights and fight for ourselves, our friends, and our country makes a difference. And the work we do now, today, in states where things feel more hopeless, builds and builds into the kind of victory we saw in Wisconsin, and a future where we can all thrive.
So what can you do this week? Set up a recurring donation to a state party or local advocacy organization. Even just $5 a month can make a huge difference in the necessary groundwork of democracy.
This is a great thread from Wisconsin Democratic State Party Chair Ben Wikler on what your donation to the Tennessee Democratic Party can do.
You can donate to the North Carolina Democratic Party here, or to the Carolina Federation here. I’ve done a lot of phone banking and electoral work with the Carolina Federation and they are fantastic.
Virginia has elections coming up this year, and that’s where I grew up so it’s near and dear to my heart. Check out the VA state party, or New Virginia Majority which is a great org I’ve also done a lot of work with.
If you want to read more about this victory, how it was achieved and why it was important, I recommend subscribing to
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