The rights that come from the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments to the Constitution, as well as legislation it spawned like the (now gutted by the Roberts Court) Voting Rights Act, cannot and should not ever be taken for granted. We should know all too well how easy it is for a Supreme Court to “interpret” the Constitution and drag us backward—look to the history of Dred Scott, and the modern day travesty of Citizens United.

The time has come— again—for those of us who have a deep-seated belief in democracy and equality for all to come to the aid of this nation. We have to get up off our asses and get out the vote.

I have lyrics and music floating around in my head a lot. Recently a line from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamiliton number, titled The Schuyler Sisters, has stuck in my head:

[ELIZA/ANGELICA/PEGGY] “We hold these truths to be self-evident That all men are created equal” [ANGELICA] And when I meet Thomas Jefferson [COMPANY] Unh! [ANGELICA] I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!

Of course the actors singing this on the Hamilton stage are women of color—excluded in those times by virtue of gender and race.

While Miranda’s Hamilton may not be the historian’s Hamilton, we are inspired by that promise of change that did come as a result of hard fought struggles—finally black men could vote, followed by women and Native Americans. A nation of immigrants—some brought here in chains, others driven here in search of a better life or fleeing persecution—continues to grow, expand, and diversify. Fundamental to that promise is birthright citizenship, a “new way of being” rarely practiced in the Old World. I’ve addressed this here before in both “Right-wing attacks on birthright citizenship have a long and sordid history” and in a look at the removal of that right in “If You are Black, Get Out: The Crisis of Statelessness in the Dominican Republic.”

I’d like to draw your attention to a new book by writer, reporter, and editor Zachary Roth, The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy.

A deeply reported look inside the new conservative movement working to undermine American democracy.



Control of the country is up for grabs—and Republicans have been rigging the game in their favor. Twenty-two states have passed restrictions on voting. Ruthless gerrymandering has given the GOP a long-term grip on Congress. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has eviscerated campaign finance laws, boosting candidates backed by big money.



It would be worrying enough if these were just schemes for partisan advantage. But the reality is even more disturbing. As reporter Zachary Roth reveals, a growing number of Republicans distrust the very idea of democracy—and they’re doing everything they can to limit it.



In The Great Suppression, Roth unearths the deep historical roots of this anti-egalitarian worldview, and introduces us to its modern-day proponents: The GOP officials pushing to make it harder to cast a ballot; the lawyers looking to scrap all limits on money in politics; the libertarian scholars reclaiming judicial activism to roll back the New Deal; and the corporate lobbyists working to ban local action on everything from the minimum wage to the environment. And he travels from Rust Belt cities to southern towns to show us how these efforts are hurting the most vulnerable Americans and preventing progress on pressing issues.

In her review of his book, titled “Being Outnumbered Doesn’t Have to Mean Losing,” Washington Monthly writer and Daily Kos blogger Nancy LeTourneau writes:

History tells us that when our founders declared their independence from British rule, that statement meant something different than how we’ve come to think of it today. First of all, they weren’t using “men” in the androgynous way that we sometimes do to refer to all human beings. They literally meant “men” – not women. But it was even more narrow than that. They used the word to refer to white male property owners. Those assumptions were operationalized in the Constitution that was developed by our founders in articles that let individual states determine who would be allowed to vote, set up the election of Senators by state legislators and stated that slaves were 3/5 of a person. It has only been through Civil War and the amendment process that we have expanded our democracy to actually affirm that all men and women are created equal. That history is documented by Zachary Roth, contributing editor of the Washington Monthly and national reporter at MSNBC, in his new book: The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy. For example, just as we are all getting reacquainted with Alexander Hamilton because of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning Broadway musical, Roth provides us with this statement from his only major speech at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia: “Hamilton said the system should allow the ‘rich and the well born’ to maintain their supremacy, since they would oppose radical change pushed by ‘the many.’ The goal, he said, was to ‘check the imprudence of democracy.” Other quotes from some of our famous founders mention the need to keep the mob in check. As John Adams said, “They want equality more than they want liberty.” The reason that Roth, reminds us of this history is because, as he documents, those race/class/gender exclusions that were originally built in to our founding were never completely abandoned by conservatives in this country. To get a sense of how present-day Republicans frame their concern about “the mob,” he points to Mitt Romney’s infamous remarks about the 47%, which echoed the conservative complaint about people who don’t pay taxes and are bought off by the promise of “free stuff.” Roth points out that these arguments from conservatives have gained currency during the Obama years. It’s not simply because the country elected its first African American president – it’s how he won. Beginning in the 1970’s, Richard Nixon referred to the “silent majority.” Through the Reagan years we heard a lot about the “permanent Republican majority.” As Roth says, “Today’s conservatives have no such confidence that the people are on their side. In fact, they are beginning to perceive that they’re in the minority – perhaps more glaringly than ever before. And yet this realization has brought with it another more hopeful one: being outnumbered doesn’t have to mean losing.” With that, Republicans have engaged in a “bold campaign” that “has amounted to nothing less than an effort to undermine democracy, Roth says. We’ve seen that in the unprecedented way that they have tried to undermine the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency via things like requiring a supermajority to pass anything in the Senate.

Please read the rest of LeTourneau’s review and get the book.

The fearful raft of racist misogynists from Brand Republican, spearheaded by their Dear Leader Trump, are whipping up xenophobia and deplorable (I prefer the term despicable) anti-democracy. But they have seen their future writ large as a living color rainbow firewall which embraces the practice of real democracy, rather than one that is but a klan-mask for white elite supremacist power and control.

When Trump clinched the Republican nomination, the non-partisan American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) posted an omnibus review of his positions. It was titled “Donald Trump: A One-Man Constitutional Crisis” and covered Trump on immigration, Trump on Muslim surveillance, Trump on torture, and Trump on libel.

Taken together, his statements and policy proposals would blatantly violate the inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution, federal and international law, and the basic norms of a free and decent society.

You have a choice to make in November. You can elect Democrats to the White House, Senate, House of Representatives, and to statehouses across the nation to continue the forward progress of this nation’s democratic journey—or you can actively or passively undermine the hard-won progress we have made, by not voting or casting feeble “protest votes.”

I just got back from a trip addressing young millennials of color in St. Paul, Minnesota. There are those who tell them that not voting or choosing a third party is a revolutionary act, or that voting for Trump will help “bring on the revolution” faster.

I have one blunt answer to that: Bullshit.

And if you do believe the “don’t vote” hype, I have a bridge to sell you. I’m from Brooklyn.