Across the country, everyday people have secured structural democracy reforms
that have led to major wins that move our country forward.
Our system is rigged in favor of the wealthy.
These elites use their wealth to purchase political power and buy off politicians
who will keep enacting policies that overwhelmingly benefit them
and keep the rest of us from fully participating in our democracy.
Sowing division is their main strategy for holding onto power.
Now, it’s easy to feel downtrodden as every aspect of our broken system is laid bare.
As the country reels from the deaths of those like Breonna Taylor
and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and the rights of millions of Americans hang in the balance,
it feels more and more like the system is stacked against us.
I’ve been working to overhaul our broken system for decades.
I know firsthand how hard the struggle for true justice and equality is.
My mother worked on it, my father worked on it, and those before them.
Others led this struggle long before I came along.
And I’ve tried to do what I can to to link up with others and take up the baton
of welfare rights workers, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
and those who started a Poor People’s Campaign
to unite poor and working class Americans
and demand bold policies that lift everyone out of poverty.
At every turn, our movement for a moral revival has faced intense backlash
from those in power.
My faith tradition tells me,
“We are not of those who shrink back unto destruction
but we are those who persevere until the salvation of the soul…”
We cannot become cynics
— we will not give up.
Take a look at Seattle.
In 2015, the city adopted an innovative small-donor system
for funding its local campaigns.
The city gave four $25 “democracy vouchers” for every registered voter that
could be donated to candidates who pledge to only accept cash donations under $250,
among other stipulations.
The program faced its first major test in 2019, when Amazon poured $1.5 million
into city council races to defeat candidates and boost corporate ones.
The result?
Of the six elections where Amazon and publicly-financed progressives
went head-to-head, only one of Amazon’s candidates won.
And the use of the vouchers increased the number
of non-voucher small dollar donations
and boosted grassroots participation.
When big money doesn’t dominate our political system,
the people can actually have their voices heard.
Now, let’s go across the country to Missouri.
In 2018, a grassroots coalition secured two major ballot victories:
Clean Missouri, a ballot initiative that limited campaign contributions,
in addition to other democracy reforms;
and Proposition B, which raised the minimum wage.
The same coalition behind the 2018 measures came together again
and won Medicaid expansion for 230,000 Missourians by a resounding margin.
These victories show game-changing shifts in Missouri, with a burgeoning political coalition
that is building a system that works for everyday Missourians
instead of just the state’s wealthy elites.
Democracy reforms have also led to major policy wins in Connecticut.
In 2008, the state enacted small donor public financing into law.
In addition to diversifying the legislature, allowing more people to run for office,
and boosting candidates’ interactions with voters,
Connecticut’s public financing system opened the gates
for bold legislation that helps working people thrive.
In 2012, Connecticut became the first state to require companies
to provide paid sick leave for their employees,
and in 2020, the state adopted a minimum wage increase —
two policies that are notoriously opposed by big-money donors.
In North Carolina, when extremists in the state legislature passed a monster
voter suppression bill after the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision
gutted the pre-clearance protections from the Voting Rights Act,
the Forward Together Moral Mondays movement challenged the law in the courts
and marched in the street to raise awareness about voter suppression.
The NAACP filed suit, and we not only won the case, with a federal court finding
that the politicians who wrote the law had targeted African-Americans
with “almost surgical precision,”
we also made clear to the people of North Carolina
that the governor who signed the law was not serving the people.
It is easy my friends,
to be pessimistic about the state of our democracy.
Some states are restricting voting access,
dark money is flooding some political campaigns,
and some politicians governing for their wealthy donors
at the expense of everyone else.
But we can build on the momentum of grassroots victories,
and let these inspire us to get bold reforms enacted on the federal level.
Poor and low wealth people now make up over 30% of the electorate.
⅓ of all poor people live in the South.
Every state that is a voter suppression state blocks living wages and blocks healthcare.
We have the potential to mobilize an historic turnout in this election,
giving tens of millions of poor and low wealth eligible voters hope
that their participation in this election could lead to real, transformative change.
2020 has awakened the country to the full breadth
of the injustices that have plagued us for centuries,
and pushed us to the point where transformational change
is the only path forward.
Where we must engage in moral fusion – organize for moral analysis, moral action, moral articulation.
We must engage in lifting our voices at the ballot box,
and declaring what one old song said:
Make them hear us.
This is just the beginning.
Together, we can unrig the system and create a true, genuine democracy,
the likes of which America has not yet seen, but must see.