U.S.
Senators Joe
Manchin
(D-WV) and Kyrsten
Sinema
(D-AZ) stand in the way of justice, freedom and democracy, and pose a
threat to the lives of Black people.
Manchin
and Sinema have made it clear they refuse to join fellow Democrats in
removing the filibuster, a Senate rule that is found nowhere in the
Constitution and requires 60 votes to pass a bill. White supremacist
lawmakers once used the tool to uphold
slavery,
kill
anti-lynching legislation
and block
civil rights.
The filibuster cements white minority rule for Republicans and is a
procedural roadblock to passing crucial legislation to protect Black
Americans.
Manchin
and Sinema view themselves as moderates who uphold bipartisan
civility. In reality, they seek compromise with Republicans who have
shown themselves consistently as bad faith actors 100%
committed
to blocking progress and stopping the Biden agenda.
In
an op-ed
for the Charleston
Gazette-Mail,
Manchin announced he will not support the For
the People Act,
a comprehensive election reform package that would protect voting
rights, regulate federal elections, reduce the influence of money in
politics and stop voter suppression efforts across the country. The
legislation is widely
popular
among voters, even among Republican voters.
Manchin
said he will vote against the bill because no Republican Senators
support it, and the right to vote has become politicized. “I
believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already
weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote
against the For the People Act. Furthermore, I will not vote to
weaken or eliminate the filibuster,” he wrote.
“If
voting rights legislation had to be 'bipartisan' the 15th Amendment
would've never passed," tweeted Ari
Berman
of Mother
Jones.
"It's astonishing that Joe Manchin calls right to vote
'fundamental' but won't back For the People Act that would stop the
greatest rollback of voting access since end of Reconstruction."
This
comes as Sen.
Sinema
doubled down on the filibuster, fraudulently claiming it was designed
to “create comity and to encourage senators to find
bipartisanship and work together.”
“The
reality is that when you have a system that is not working
effectively — and I would think that most would agree that the
Senate is not a particularly well-oiled machine, right? The way to
fix that is to fix your behavior, not to eliminate the rules or
change the rules, but to change the behavior,” Sinema said
alongside Republican Texas Senator
John Cornyn
in Arizona. The Arizona lawmaker angered Democrats when she curtsied
and made an exaggerated thumbs down gesture on the Senate floor to
oppose a $15
federal minimum wage.
Corporate
lobbyists are compensating the two moderate Democrats for voting
against Democratic policies that seek economic and racial justice.
Weeks after defeating the minimum wage increase, Sinema and Manchin
headlined the annual conference of the National
Restaurant Association,
which had actively lobbied against the bill.
The
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobbying group in
America, opposes the For the People Act and is “aggressively
lobbying”
against it, according to Popular
Information.
The Chamber is rewarding
Manchin and Sinema
with campaign cash for opposing Biden’s agenda, preserving the
filibuster and working with Republicans, according to Reuters.
Manchin’s
statements
against voting rights and election reform parrot the Chamber’s
talking points against the legislation. And other anti-voting rights
groups funded by the Koch
Brothers
have pressured Manchin as well.
“Let’s
be clear: Manchin’s stance is not just against Black people but
poor & low-wealth people of every race, creed, color, etc.
Connect the dots. Manchin hides behind ‘bipartisanship,’
but he is really a puppet of the US Chamber of Commerce and the
corporate elite,” tweeted Rev.
Dr. William
J. Barber II.
Barber announced a June 14 Moral March on Manchin in West Virginia,
followed by a June 23 action on Manchin and McConnell in Washington,
D.C.
“Mitch
McConnell and Joe Manchin are working in a bipartisan way to
dismantle our nation’s pursuit of democracy,” tweeted
Charles
Booker.
Joe
Manchin is a wealthy man who represents a red state that ranks
at or near the very bottom of the country
in health care, education, economics and infrastructure, with over
900,000
poor
and low-wealth people — 45% of the population, according to
Rev. Barber.
Meanwhile,
Kyrsten Sinema is a former progressive from Arizona — a state
Biden won thanks to mobilization from Native
American
and Latinx
voters.
And now she provides cover for white male supremacy.
Much
is at stake for Black America if these senators get their way. Aside
from the For the People Act, the entire Biden agenda hangs in the
balance. For example, the John
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
would restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act the
Supreme Court gutted. The George
Floyd Justice in Policing Act
promises reform to address systemic racism and police abuse. The PRO
Act
would strengthen workers’ rights, and fight against systemic
racism and strike down right-to-work
laws
rooted in Jim Crow segregation. H.R.
40
would establish a commission to study reparations, and H.R. 51, which
passed the House of Representatives, would grant statehood
to the District of Columbia.
“The
Democrats who are conservative, vote with the Republicans who are
conservative,” said Malcolm
X.
In his critique of white politicians, the leader noted that white
liberals and conservatives are factions “fighting each other
for power and prestige” and using Black people as a “political
football, a political pawn, an economic football, and economic pawn.
A social football, a social pawn.”
Martin
Luther King scorned the white
moderate,
whom he viewed as more of a stumbling block to Black freedom than the
Ku Klux Klan. According to King, the white moderate “is more
devoted to ‘order’ than to justice,” and
“paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another
man’s freedom.”
As
if he were speaking today, King also understood the role of the
Senate filibuster in blocking civil rights. “The vast majority
of people in the United States would vote favorably for such a bill,”
he said in 1963 on civil
rights legislation.
“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate
that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster
to keep the majority of people from even voting. They won’t let
the majority of senators vote. Certainly, they would not want the
majority of people to vote because they know that they do not
represent the majority of American people. They represent in their
own states a very small minority,” he added.
And
while Senators Manchin and Sinema would have you believe the
filibuster will save democracy, they would break bread with white
supremacists who are killing democracy and have no intention of
playing nice. After all, Republicans voted against a bipartisanship
commission to investigate the January
6 insurrection
at the U.S. Capitol — because criminals don’t investigate
themselves, and white lynch mobs never were held accountable in this
country — and are endorsing wholesale Jim Crow voter
suppression laws on the state level to cement Republican white
minority rule.
These
Republicans intend to take power Jim Crow style, and Sinema and
Manchin must stand with them because they certainly do not stand with
Black people. And they play games with us we cannot afford.
Black
voters who elected Democrats to do something deserve much better than
this. White moderate Democrats seeking bipartisanship with white
nationalists are a threat to our health and safety. They are getting
in the way and getting on people’s last nerves, and nothing
less is on the line than our lives.
This
commentary was originally published by The
Grio
|