Thread by @michaelharriot

Y'all muthafuckas know:

A thread:

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1374433682119749637

First of all, we have to understand what the filibuster is.

It's ANY MEASURE that stops a vote. That's it. That's all. It's not in the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't really have many rules for Congress. It doesn't even mandate that a majority is needed to pass a law.

Specifically, aside from a majority to conduct business; a 3/4 vote to amend the Constitution; and a 2/3rds vote to expel a member, override a presidential veto and impeach a president.

Every other rule, the House & Senate makes up for itself, according to the Constitution

In the beginning, the senate Basically used parliamentary procedure & the "previous question" rule.

Essentially, someone would bring up a "question" (a bill, law, etc) & they would debate it. When everyone was finished, they'd vote to end the debate on the "previous question,"

Then they'd vote on the ACTUAL "previous question" (the law, bill, treaty, whatever.)

I know it's stupid.

Some dude named Aaron Burr thought so, too. When he was VP (which meant he was president of the Senate) he proposed, "Maybe we should stop having two votes."

Everyone agreed. So Burr changed the rules. Basically, when someone proposed a bill, everyone would say the stuff they wanted to say. Then, when everyone was finished, they'd vote on the "previous question."

You may be asking yourself: "Damn, does having two votes really take that long?"

Not really. But here's the thing: Aaron Burr didn't have shit to do.

Back in those days, the presidential candidate with the second-highest number of electoral votes was automatically VP.

He ran against Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and actually TIED. But the House of Representatives voted for Jefferson after Alexander Hamilton convinced Congress that Burr wasn't about shit and wasn't every gonna be shit. (This would make a GREAT MUSICAL)

So shortly after shooting Alexander Hamilton in the face for not keeping Burr's name out of his mouth, Burr changed the Senate rules.

This was when the Senate was all-white (not like today, when it's just 91% white) and white people are the kings of "discovering" things (loopholes, medicines already in use, lands that are already occupied...You know how white people "discover" shit.)

Someone discovered:

"Wait...If we don't want a law to pass, there's literally nothing to prevent us from just talking until someone leaves!" (Remember that Quorum thing I was talking about?)

Thus, the filibuster was born.

Now, when I say "someone, discovered..." There's a name you need to know:

John Randolph of Roanoake.

Not "John Randolph." You gotta say the whole thing like "A Tribe Called Quest" or "Meghan The Stallion."

Seriously, they called him the whole thing. He initially represented Virginia in the House.

And John Randolph of Roanoke could talk his ass off

So when John Randolph of Roanoake discovered there was nothing to stop him from talking, he did that shit ALL THE TIME in the House of Representatives. (Remember, the House AND the Senate had a filibuster. )

Probably because he was high and drunk. Seriously:

John Randolph of Roanoake LOVED stirring up shit. He hated EVERYBODY and LOVED slavery (Probably because he had over 500 slaves on his plantation–The Roanoake Plantation.)

See? You gotta say the whole thing.

In 1825, Randolph was appointed to the Senate to fill a vacant seat.

That same year, President John Quincy Adams was trying to pass a bill that J.R. of R. thought would take powers from the slaveholding states.

John Randolph of Roanoake was about to bring his shit-talking to the Senate. He told his Senate colleagues that if they passed it:

"We should deserve to have negroes for our taskmasters, and for the husbands of our wives."

But John Randolph of Roanoake was just getting started. He started roasting EVERYBODY. It was so bad that Henry Clay, the Secretary of State challenged him to a duel!

The bullet didn't penetrate J.R. of R's coat so, they let bygones be bygones.

John Randolf of Roanoake eventually went back to the House but aside from that time he beat another congressman with a cane in the stairs of the House....

And how he fought 1 congressman SIX TIMES

And how he brought his hunting dogs and his "hunting slaves" on the House floor....

And how he stabbed someone with a fork at dinner

And how he started a company to send Black people back to Africa (with the same motherfucker that shot him)

And his heroin habit

And the fact that he owned so many slaves that when he died, there was enough to START THEIR OWN TOWN IN OHIO

And that his tactics, in part, ended the House filibuster.

John Randolph of Roanoake was the first person to perform a Senate filibuster.

And, yes, it was racist AF.

Now historians are gonna say the first filibuster was in 1837 because... that's how white history works.

But before the Civil War, the filibuster was basically a tool used by the slaveholding Southern Senators who filibustered the admission of any free state.

Again, racism.

Then, in 1917, another racist (Woodrow Wilson) said "this is enough" & adopted the "cloture rule." If 2/3rds of the people present voted for cloture, a Senator would have to shut up (I really wish it was called the STFU rule)

In 1949 they changed it to 2/3rd of ALL SENATORS

Why?

Because in 1946, 5 Southerners filibustered for WEEKS against a bill to prevented workplace discrimination EVEN THOUGH IT HAD ENOUGH VOTES.

racism.

Then in 1957, pro-racism Sen. Strom Thurmond set the record by filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hrs, 18 min

So in 1959, they changed the STFU rule back to 2/3rds present.

Why?

The Senate was preparing to debate civil rights.

That's THE ONLY reason the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed after STFU rule was invoked on Southern Democrats' 75-hr filibuster. And guess what happened?

The Civil Rights Act passed on July 2, 1964.

In Sept. 1964, Strom Thurmond bolted from the Democratic Party to help Barry Goldwater convince Southerners that civil rights were evil

It was called the "Southern Strategy."

And THAT'S how the GOP became the party of racists.

If you're still skeptical about the filibuster, here's one last story.

In 1918 Rep. Leonidas C. Dyer introduced a bill that would establish lynching as a federal crime.

It failed.

Why? Because Congress said Black men were running around raping white girls (Imagine that)...

Then, in 1919, white people went on a lynching spree now known as "Red Summer"

I mean it was crazy. But, to be fair, the whites called them "race riots," initiated by "radical propaganda" and Black WWI vets believing they should be "conciliatory" to whites.

That y'all Senate.

So the NAACP produced a report that disproved the myth of Black savages who couldn't stop their urges to attack flack butts & thin lips.

Less than 1/6 of the Black people who were lynched in the previous 30 years were accused of rape.

This totally changed white people's minds

Sike. The bill still didn't pass.

But Black folks didn't stop trying>

It was filibustered in 1922.

And in 1923.

And in 1924.

I think you see where this is going.

When was the last time it was filibustered?

Well, here's an interesting fact:

In 2020, the Senate tried to pass the Emmett Till Anti-lynching act.

One man, Sen Rand Paul, filibustered it.

Why?

Because he said the bill would... (Wait till you hear this shit)

"...cheapen the meaning of lynching by defining it so broadly as to include a minor bruise or abrasion."

Now Paul didn't have to stand up and talk. He didn't have to rant for hours.

BECAUSE THE FILIBUSTER IS NOT REAL.

See, most filibusters never reach a cloture vote.

If someone SAYS they're gonna filibuster, it kills the bill unless it already has 67 votes. You don't actually have to do it, you can just THREATEN it.

So Rand Paul killed the bill...

On the day of George Floyd's funeral.

But here's the thing about that bill...

Aside from a few changes in fines and a part demanding equal treatment by police, the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Act is THE EXACT SAME BILL as the Dwyer Anti-Lynching Act.

To this day, there has never been a federal law against lynching.

And it is BECAUSE of the racist history of the filibuster.

It is a tool of white supremacy. Nothing else.

Anyway... Mitch McConnell knows this.

How do I know?

Well, in 1964, when those Southern Democrats were filibustering the Civil Rights Act, one Southern Senator didn't

John S. Cooper the Senator from Kentucky.

Some of Cooper's interns had to quit because they were threatened when he became one of the few Southerners who voted to invoke the STFU rule.

But not one.

Some dude named Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr

Mitch McConnell is a liar.

But I'm sure you already know that.

Hold up, there's one last story I need to tell.

Here's how this thing comes full circle.

In 1619, 160-ton Dutch privateer ship flying a British flag arrived on the shores of the Jamestown Colony. From that ship, the White Lion, came "20 and odd negroes" who were the first enslaved people in the English colony of Virginia.

Now, you probably know this.

But why do you think that ship chose Virginia?

Well, the captain of the White Lion was a thief. His partner was named Daniel Elfrith, who captained the Treasurer, who bought a load of enslaved people 4 days later.

The two captains had attacked the San Juan Bautista and stolen its human cargo that it was trying to sell in Mexico.

But because England & Mexico were beefing, they couldn't sell the enslaved people in Spanish territory. They really couldn't sell them in English territory.

No one was really fucking with pirates at the moment.

But told the White Lion "meet me in Jamestown, I know a guy."

The guy was like: "Broke-ass Jamestown? They ain't got no money!"

He was right. Everyone in Jamestown was starving. Jamestown was basically a failed colony.

Except for one dude. He had figured out a way to plant tobacco. And the natives were whipping the English ass until the Jamestown governor tricked the chief's daughter into coming onto a ship. When the dude married the chief's daughter, the chief gave the lazy ass Englishmen food

He also gave his daughter's new husband (yall call her Pocahontas) free land. But who'd work it? The colonizes didn't really know how to plant shit.

They were literally eating other white people until they got the welfare smithsonianmag.com/history/starvi…

But Pocahonatas' husband recognized the ship, the colonists got a few enslaved people and future America was saved.

How did he recognize the ship?

Well, it was the same ship Pocahontas was kidnapped on. It was the same ship he had traveled on to England—the Treasurer

What does this have to do with anything?

Well, in the 1500s and 1600s ships flying English and Dutch flags did this all the time. It led to quite a few beefs. But they didn't call them "pirates" or "thieving-ass white people" They used a Spanish term.

The Spanish term eventually was used when white people tried to start their own slaveholding countries by overthrowing Central American countries.

Then it became a term for lawless white people who ignored rules like the thieves who stole Africans and bought them to America

Or as we call them now:

Filibusters.

etymonline.com/word/filibuster

So, great question @evamckend

And that’s why:

theroot.com/the-filibuster…