The Toll of January 6th is Still Being Exacted

By now much has been written about the insurrection on January 6, 2021 and Donald Trump’s role leading up to it.
Texas Progressive Action Network was one of many organizations to call for the former president’s immediate removal from office and a ban on his ever holding federal public office again. We knew then as we still know today that the futile effort to disrupt the certification of a national election and maintain a hold on power by sowing distrust, engaging in conspiracy and disinformation tactics to undermine the will of the people is both corrupt and a betrayal of office. It also remains a danger to democracy.

The Senate’s impeachment trial is now underway and we continue to hope that lawmakers will hold to their oaths to serve the people and not any personal political interests because the truth is that the full ramifications of what led to the insurrectionist violence on January 6th are still being carried out across the nation.

More than the photos or video of the attack, more than the physical scars on our nation’s Capitol still visible as recently as the morning of Inauguration, the damage that Donald Trump has done to our voting process and our nation’s electorate continues to reverberate to this day.

We are seeing this damage play out in real time as at least 33 states across the country are engaging in their own acts against the people by introducing new rounds of restrictive, anti-voter, anti-democracy legislation. We are seeing this damage play out in real time when the media frames such legislation of barely concealed voter suppression as “election integrity” even as we know by now that the 2020 election was secure and that no such evidence to support Donald Trump’s claims of fraud has ever been unearthed.

Too often the voters caught in the crosshairs of these kinds of legislative attacks are voters of color, under-resourced voters, young voters, voters living through poverty, voters living with disability and the elderly. To put it more simply: Those already marginalized and fighting to have a place in the process.

Rather than continue to try to double down on making Texas voting harder, still, we should be clearing the way for the many eligible voters across our home state to seize the ballot that is rightfully theirs. We should be making voter registration easier, making our voter education campaigns more expansive and working to make each election run as smoothly as possible for voters because voting is not supposed to be a burden or hardship.

We know that when we all engage in voting, we’re building a more inclusive and representative society. We know that a healthy democracy can translate to so much more prosperity for our communities in many other respects.

The generational impact of voter suppression and disinformation is such that it can leave gaping wounds on whole families, entire communities. People who have every right to be part of democracy in action walking away from their vote perhaps for good because of corruption that’s allowed to take root and grow. It leaves one to wonder if these legislative hits on the will of the people brought on by those in power aren’t just there to beat the vote down to a size that produces election outcomes more to their liking. To more effectively create a scenario where politicians choose their voters and their elections all while leading us to believe it’s for the “integrity” of those elections.

Have democracy if it suits you, just not too much.

We betray our fellow citizens when we don’t push back on these disingenuous claims as loudly as we can.

For these reasons the violent attacks against our institutions, against our very vote, as well as those who fanned the flames of that unrighteous act and the many unrighteous acts unfolding before us now in state legislatures across the country, should all be held to account.

The constant push and pull for the ballot has been going on for far too long and we know it will not end with this trial or any one presidency. This is the work of each generation to and for the next generation. Donald Trump is unfortunately just the latest big iteration of the kind of corruption that takes hold when power’s biggest governing interest is nothing more than self preservation. We know we can do better and we must never stop striving for it.

It is incumbent on us as voters and advocates, incumbent on the lawmakers we put in office and incumbent on the media to speak out clearly against these continued attacks to our democracy and our vote.

Including and especially, the ones that will continue to echo long past January 6th.