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African American Policy Forum

10 Nov, 9 tweets, 2 min read

THREAD: Trump isn't going to steal the election. But what he and the GOP are doing is nonetheless extremely dangerous. The most immediate threat is violence against poll workers, election officials, and politicians. Election officials in Philly are already getting death threats.

In Philly, election commissioners are getting death threats and anti-Semitic messages and have police stationed outside their homes. Vote counters in Georgia have also been singled out by name and received death threats. fusion.inquirer.com/politics/elect…

Trump and the GOP, by spreading the lie that this election has been stolen through voter fraud, are fomenting violence and putting civil servants at risk.

There's a real concern that it's only a matter of time before someone acts on one of these threats.

And the type of violence that Trump and the GOP are inciting is entirely predictable. They're trying to convince millions of Americans that Democrats literally engineered a coup through the use of fraudulent votes. If you believe that, why wouldn't you take up arms?

There are also longer-term reasons why what Trump is doing is so dangerous. This election wasn't close enough for him to steal. But that won't always be the case, especially for Senate, House, and state and local races. Many of them will be decided by much closer margins.

The message coming from Trump and the GOP right now is unambiguous: Democrats winning elections is inherently illegitimate and validly cast votes must be rejected when that happens. What Perdue and Loeffler are saying is a perfect example of this.

There's been absolutely no evidence that there was voter fraud in Georgia, let alone widespread voter fraud. Yet Biden is poised to win the state so both Perdue and Loeffler are calling on the Republican Secretary of State to resign.

Ensure that Republicans win or lose your job.

The play the GOP has drawn up won't work when Biden is ahead by 10,000 - 50,000+ votes in multiple states. Refusing to concede, baseless accusations of fraud, and frivolous legal challenges won't swing the outcome of this election. But that won't necessarily always be the case.

The fact that so many in the GOP and in rightwing media have gone along with Trump's plan is proof that this anti-democratic effort to subvert the will of the people, like so many other ills over the last four years, did not begin with Trump nor will it end when he leaves office.

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African American Policy Forum

@AAPolicyForum

10 Nov

What Trump and his allies are doing now isn't new. There's a long American tradition of overturning elections and the democratic will in favor of installing white supremacist regimes. It happened throughout the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction South.

A history thread:

In 1898, two days after Black politicians won election in Wilmington, NC, a mob of more than 2,000 whites led an insurrection in which they killed 60-300 African Americans, burned down the only Black newspaper in town, and overthrew the democratically elected local government.

This violent act of white supremacist terrorism was originally referred to as the "Wilmington Race Riot." Three years later, Charles Aycock, one of the men who led the coup and instigated the violence, won election as Governor of North Carolina on a platform of white supremacy.

Read 8 tweets

African American Policy Forum

@AAPolicyForum

25 Oct

Do Trump judges believe Brown v. Board, the landmark case that ended “separate but equal,” was correctly decided? The short answer is… maybe. But scores of them refuse to say so publicly.

A quick thread on one startling example of the right-wing takeover of the federal courts.

In the early days of the Trump administration, Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee began asking Trump appointees whether they thought Roe v. Wade was correctly decided. These judges, not wanting to admit that they didn't agree with Roe v. Wade, would dodge the question.

The most common way for Trump's radical nominees to dodge the question was for them to give a response along the lines of "I can't comment on that case, as that issue (abortion) might come before me as a judge." They framed their evasiveness as an attempt to remain impartial.

Read 24 tweets

African American Policy Forum

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23 Oct

It didn’t have to be this bad.

"You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April."

February 10, 2020

"[China] — they’ve had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it — it looks like they’re getting it under control more and more. They’re getting it more and more under control. So I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away."

February 25, 2020

Read 37 tweets

African American Policy Forum

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23 Oct

This is as good a time as any to remind people that, in a recent dissent, Amy Coney Barrett wrote that the right to vote and serve on juries belonged "only to virtuous citizens." Her opinion also suggests that all civic rights are subject to virtue-based exceptions.

Unsurprisingly her opinion makes no mention of how such "virtuous citizen" restrictions were used after the Civil War and the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments to deny African Americans the right to vote.

At a time when the right to vote is under extreme attack, we should be critical of those who endorse outdated notions rooted in white supremacy as a justification for denying millions of Americans the right to vote.

Read 4 tweets

African American Policy Forum

@AAPolicyForum

20 Oct

As we keep seeing images of long voting lines, its important to remember there is nothing inspiring about people having to wait hours and hours to vote. Long lines are discriminatory, suppressive, and a direct result of the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act.

A thread:

A 2016 study found that minority voters are six times as likely as whites to wait longer than an hour to vote. Another study found that “voters in heavily black neighborhoods were 74 percent more likely to have to wait at least 30 minutes in order to vote.”washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…

It would be wrong to write off long lines simply as an annoyance. Research has indicated that long lines lower the probability of an individual voting in the next election by about one point for every hour in line. When it comes to close elections, margins like this matter.

Read 6 tweets

African American Policy Forum

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16 Oct

Today is the anniversary of Tommie Smith and John Carlos' famous Black power salute at the 1968 Olympics. The image of Smith and Carlos with fists raised is one of the most recognizable sports photos in history. The story behind the famous image, however, is less well known.

Earlier in the year Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis. A police mob in Chicago had beaten anti-war protestors at the Democratic National Convention. Muhammad Ali was still banned from boxing and fighting his conviction for refusing to be drafted.

Days before the Olympic games began in Mexico City, police and troops gunned down hundreds of student activists who had gathered in the city's Three Cultures Square to protest. All of this was fresh in the minds of Tommie Smith and John Carlos when they ran the 200-meter race.

Read 13 tweets

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