The battle for democracy is the fight of a lifetime

We’re going to save this country.

That’s not an aim or a goal. That’s a promise.

It’s what the men and women rebuilding Jim Crow should fear. And it’s what we Americans owe each other.

The Supreme Court made the law an arm of Republican policy. It spat on the blood shed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And it is doing all it can to nullify the 14th and 15th amendments.

Alabama’s state officials no longer bother with the pretenses of democracy. Just look at how they greeted the news of the nation’s high court beclowning itself to allow the state Legislature to revert to a previous map and reduce the state’s Black congressional representation.

“My job in this office was to put the Legislature in the best possible legal position to draw a congressional map that favors Republicans 7-0,” said Steve Marshall, apparently a private lawyer for the GOP and not Alabama’s attorney general.

Or how about this pathetic statement from Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger?

“The Supreme Court’s action removes the thumb from the scale in legislative and congressional elections and allows Republicans to once again have a fair chance to compete,” he said.

This is a party that controls every state office, seven of Alabama’s nine congressional seats and 103 of the 140 seats in the state Legislature. It’s hard to tell what conservatives want more: power or pity.

I know what I want. Representative government. I don’t want a new authoritarianism rising on the foundations of Jim Crow. I want that foundation destroyed down to the last pebble. Public issues — real issues like education and public safety — should be debated and addressed by people in good faith, whatever side of the aisle they’re on.

And I’m tired of being ruled by those who soak their heads in right-wing media that every minute gets crueler and more detached from reality. I’m sick of elected officials flooding our state with firearms while preaching about the alleged threats of transgender teenagers. I’m disgusted by men swinging their Christianity around like a scythe and calling it religious freedom. And I despise politicians who take badly needed money from Alabama’s public schools, give it to rich families in private ones, and have the gall to label it choice.

This is what living under a cabal is like. We have to waste our time with their obsessions because they don’t have to pay attention to our needs. By and large, our elected officials have no interest in public service. Only power.

That’s Alabama. That’s what it’s been for centuries. And thanks to the high court, it’s spreading like a virus around the nation.

But don’t despair. The issue before us is clear, in every election and in every action: Who stands for democracy, and who stands against it?

Every other concern flows into that. Women will not have control of their healthcare until we make it politically impossible to treat them like children. Alabama schools will continue to struggle with funding until we can remove the rich man’s veto over responsible taxation. All of us will continue fearing for our children’s safety until the political shields around gun maniacs fall down.

I have no illusions that getting to that place will be easy. Our blatantly apartheid constitution celebrates its 125th birthday this year. Amid surging disgust with their performance, federal and state regimes subvert law and destroy common decency to entrench themselves. As Frederick Douglass once said, power concedes nothing without a demand.

But neither do I doubt the willingness of our friends and neighbors to make those demands. Or to make it difficult for the people who would oppress us. Alabamians have shown unconquerable bravery in the face of violent tyranny. And from the protests I saw at the Statehouse last week, that spirit still remains.

This is not a battle that can be won in a day or a single election. This is the campaign of a lifetime, of a hundred small victories and resolve in the face of reverses. It is one that we will hand to future generations to finish. That’s a sobering fact. Maybe a distressing one.

But I think of Langston Hughes, reaching out to us from another time of oppression and fear:

The hopes for our nation feel dim in the face of a cynical and narrow-minded judiciary. Petty men are attacking the democratic legacy won through the blood of ordinary Alabamians. Alabama’s shameful legacy of oppression feels heavy today.

But we also have a legacy of courage to stand on and a path of resistance to follow until the day democracy triumphs again. And however long it takes, however hard the struggle, we will prevail.