A message from CWA President Claude Cummings, Jr.
I’ve at all times loved Independence Day. It’s great to collect with family and friends for a cookout and to observe as my youngsters – and now my grandkids – ooh and ahh over the fireworks and possibly set off just a few themselves. I welcome the possibility to mirror on the beliefs that led to the founding of our nation and our historical past of wrestle as we’ve sought to reside as much as these beliefs.
This yr Independence Day has a heaviness to it. The system of presidency that our nation’s founders put in place was meant to make sure that nobody is above the legislation, but a majority on the Supreme Courtroom has turned that on its head, giving one individual – the President – a literal “get out of jail free” card for even essentially the most severe violations of our legal guidelines and our Structure.
That may be harmful in any circumstance, however it’s a grievous risk within the fingers of Donald Trump, who has proven full disregard for the legislation all through his enterprise and political careers and has repeatedly stated that he intends to make use of the navy as a home police power and the federal authorities as a instrument for a marketing campaign of retribution in opposition to his perceived enemies.
Over the previous week, I’ve heard from many who’ve all however given up. They are saying that there’s nothing we are able to do and {that a} descent into dictatorship and demagoguery is inevitable.
We should not hand over.
This can be a photograph of my father’s ballot tax receipt. Black individuals who needed to train that almost all primary proper needed to pay $1.50 in 1947 to have the ability to vote. I hold this as a reminder of the place we’ve been and the place we are able to by no means return to once more.
At our nation’s founding practically 250 years in the past, the fitting to vote was restricted to white male landowners and my ancestors had been enslaved. However Individuals had the instruments they wanted to battle injustice and broaden alternative – the free press, the fitting to have interaction in collective motion, and the vote itself.
My spouse, Ruth, is from Selma, and I typically take into consideration what was going via the minds of the women and men who had been gathered within the houses and church buildings the night time earlier than they marched throughout the Edmund Pettus Bridge, on what’s now generally known as Bloody Sunday. They knew what they had been about to face. They understood the violence that was about to be unleashed on them. They didn’t know if they’d survive the day. However they did it anyway. Not for themselves, however for future generations. For us.
Your vote and the votes of your co-workers, your loved ones members, and your mates are highly effective they usually have been paid for in blood. I, together with 1000’s of CWA members and retirees, might be doing all the pieces we are able to between now and election day to prove the vote to proceed the progress we’ve made with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and to elect pro-worker candidates for the U.S. Home and Senate.
Independence Day wasn’t an finish. It was the start of a wrestle over the that means of equality and the price of freedom. Let’s recommit ourselves to wrestle collectively for a brighter future.