This Nov. 8, freedom is on the line
By Fedrick C. Ingram
I’m glad you are reading this right now because, right now, our country’s democracy and freedom are on the line. The U.S. House and Senate are up for grabs in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, and if the wrong people get in, they will suddenly stop talking about “voter fraud” and start in again with imposing the racist and exclusionary tactics of former President Donald Trump.
Already, some are talking about cutting back the public services we all rely on. In the words of the poet Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” If Republicans win the Senate, they want to “sunset” every federal law every five years. What do you think that means for Medicare? Or Social Security? Or civil rights?
The danger lies not only in the people we send to Washington. Across all levels of government, the freedoms we have enjoyed for 50 years hang in the balance.
On the state and local levels, right down to school boards, we are seeing an assault on what we teach our children, how we vote and even what women can do with their own bodies. Now more than ever we are seeing attacks on Jewish people, Hispanic people, Black and Asian people — and on the most vulnerable among us, like LGBTQIA+ people, even transgender children and their parents.
These attacks are divisive and dangerous.
And beyond the targeting of cultural and ethnic minorities, we see the continued attacks on our educators and healthcare workers — teachers and school staff, higher education faculty and staff, and nurses and medical technicians — as well as on public employees, who do the important and often invisible work of running our communities. It corrodes humanity to demean the helpers and the nurturers.
But I was taught, and I’m sure you were too, that we should leave a place better than we found it. We are in the business of making people’s lives better. And to do that we must be problem-solvers.
In the midterm elections next month, we need to help lift into public office the candidates who hold our values and who, like us, solve problems.
These elections have the power to help define who we are as Americans. In Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnock, running for his first full term in the Senate, and Stacey Abrams, running again for governor, embody the highest ideals of our country. Like us, they believe in freedom, democracy and a nation where everyone can thrive.
Four years later and four years stronger, after her razor-thin loss for the governor’s job, Abrams has built up a voting rights powerhouse of an organization called Fair Fight. If you don’t know it, check it out. Abrams also has produced a documentary on our nation’s shameful history of denying Black people the right to vote — the true history our adversaries don’t want children to learn about. And as governor, Abrams wants to repair the social safety net for future generations.
For his part, Warnock is in Washington leading the fight for voting rights. We need to support him in these elections and keep him there to continue that important work. In the spirit of his mentor, the late Rep. John Lewis, Warnock understands that our vote is our voice.
Why am I lifting up these two excellent candidates from Georgia? Because their state has become ground zero for voter suppression. With partisan gerrymandering, long lines in minority communities, polling place closures and voter purges, Georgia has practically written the voter suppression playbook. In 2021, Georgia’s governor signed a sweeping anti-voter law designed to block Georgians from the polls. Warnock calls this law, and laws like it around the country, “Jim Crow in new clothes.”
I am asking you not only to get out and vote but to get others to the polls, too. Bring your elderly aunt — the one who helped integrate public schools back in the day. Make sure your cousins have a plan to vote for Democrats straight up and down the ticket.
You may grumble when you hear your union say that this is the most important election ever. But it is, and here’s why: Ever since the dividers started organizing themselves — Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” in the 1990s, the tea party (remember them?), the Koch brothers with their “model legislation” that has warped state laws, and the people who for 50 years have called themselves pro-life but are actually anti-women — these dividers are trying to win public office.
They show us who they are when they say gun violence isn’t a gun problem, it’s a mental health problem and then — just a day after another mass shooting at a school — vote against a bill that would increase access to mental health services in schools.
In 2016, they got their wish by electing the former president. In 2020, we turned them back by electing President Joe Biden.
But these dividers have regrouped and are coming for us on school boards and county councils and in state legislatures, governors’ mansions and the U.S. Congress.
No way. We must elect candidates who will restore moral dignity and respect. We need to keep leaders who will hold the line, like Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Sen. Warnock of Georgia. We need problem-solvers in new leadership roles — like Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and U.S. Rep. Val Demings in my home state of Florida, who are running for the Senate.
And we also need proven leaders from our own ranks, like former teacher Karla Hernandez, the dynamic and capable president of the United Teachers of Dade (that’s us, below), who is running for lieutenant governor of Florida with our once and future Gov. Charlie Crist.
Together, Hernandez and Crist can restore Florida to a state where voting rights are honored, where public health crises are addressed, where teachers can teach and where children can learn. Together, they can turn Florida around.
This is an election about who we are and who we will be. One side — our side — is fighting for a better life, and for solutions to the concerns that keep people up at night, like healthcare costs and student debt.
Everywhere this Election Day, Nov. 8, what matters most is at stake: Healthcare is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Public education is on the ballot. Our economic security and our ability to live a decent life are on the ballot.
We can do this, friends. We can move America forward. Let’s do it!
Fedrick C. Ingram is secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, serving 1.7 million members, including pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; school support staff; higher education faculty and staff; federal, state and local government employees; and nurses and other healthcare professionals. Ingram is immediate past president of the 140,000-member Florida Education Association. He also has served as vice president of the AFT’s executive council.
