Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Lest We Furr-get: Freedom Summers


By Hubie and Bertie

Today, the January 6 Committee heard testimony about Benedict Donald's relentless campaign to get swing state officials and legislators to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A couple of the witnesses were familiar, like Brad Raffensberger and Gabriel Sterling from Georgia. A new face was Rusty Bowers, the speaker of Arizona's house of representatives, who talked movingly about his devotion to the Constitution. (No, we don't think the Constitution was divinely inspired, but that's okay. Let him say it.)

The afternoon wrapped with testimony from a Georgia elections official who described how Trump upended her and her mother's lives by singling them out with his lies. Trump's abuse not only ran Shaye Moss out of her job and forced her mom, Ruby Freeman, into hiding — it drove every one of the Fulton County election staffers Moss worked with to seek other employment in fear and disgust.

So in other words, make it difficult for people to vote, scream fraud when they do, and depress election workers' willingness to make the nuts and bolts of democracy work. That's the full gamut of an autocratic voter suppression campaign. And even though Trump didn't succeed in holding on to power, his brand of suppression is continuing in red and swing states in full force.

How ironic that today is the 58th anniversary of the day Freedom Riders James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi. The Trumpsters and the MAGA mob may not have shot, castrated and bulldozed the 2020 election workers they harassed into shallow graves. But the rage of today's GOP against Americans' right to register, vote, and have their votes count is just as brutal in spirit, and inspires the same kind of terror. We cats HISS.

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