By Julianne Malveaux
The Vice President ran a beautiful campaign. She worked like a trojan, traveling from city to city, sometimes as many as three or four in a day. She did interviews, town halls, television shows and one on one interviews with both national and local media. In a scant one hundred days, she built a dynamic and credible campaign, and many of us anticipated a victory, if not on election night, then a few days later.
Instead, we experienced the excruciating pain of watching delicate glass shatter at our feet. I hung out with the Roland Martin crew from the Black Star Network from about 9:30 election night until nearly 3 am, hoping and praying for Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, or some durn place to break our way. But the results came back like body blows. We were losing.
Then hope was gone. The numbers did not break our way. The Orange Man, with his Elon Musk funded ground game pulled out not a win, but a rout. He now has the White House, the Senate and maybe the House of Representatives, not to mention the Supreme Court and many other lower courts. Unless Democrats can hold the house, he can do pretty much anything he wants to do. He and his cronies have already started picking staff, but we should be clear that they have been picking staff since they issued Project 2025 a couple of years ago.
So, what are we supposed to do, especially if Republicans have a clean sweep? They don’t have the House of Representatives yet, and we pray they don’t. But, what if they do? What do we do?
Vice President Harris and President Biden offered great messages about accepting the vote, embracing the vision, and moving ahead. They exhibited the grace that the President-elect was incapable of in 2020, when he led a rabid insurrection to protest the outcome of the vote. What if Vice President had exhibited the same vitriol? Blessedly she is more passionate about our country than he who debased our entire nation (calling people stupid and low-IQ and worse) in his campaign.
No matter. Dr. Maya Angelou said that “when people show you who they are believe them”. Believe that the 47th President will have no respect for the law or for the Constitution. Believe that he will attempt mass deportation and even mass firings of federal workers. Believe that he will eviscerate our regulatory agencies, especially the ones who protect our workers — the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the National Labor Relations Board NLRB, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and more. If Dems can’t hold the House, there will be few tools to stop the carnage, but there are laws and there are tools.
The justice community can come together to plan, to monitor the regulatory agencies and stop any chicanery. We can monitor the integrity of the Department of Education, and legally fight to ensure that Title I programs are maintained. We can challenge cuts in block grants. We cannot roll over and allow the forces of Trump and Project 2025 to vanquish us.
It won’t be easy. It will be challenging to overcome the smugness that comes from a community that is enjoying their unexpected victory. But there will be allies at the edges. Will conservative environmentalists be willing to sacrifice the future health of our planet to mollify Trump? Will conservative labor activists be willing to weaken the NLRB? Is there any wiggle room in Project 2025 or is Mr. Trump willing to come in and start slashing and burning on day one.
What about deportations? Can the soon to be 47th President really organize mass deportations and border controls on day one? Ad we’ve seen from voter roll purges, these folks don’t always get the right people. There must be lawyers lined up, especially to protect people from illegal deportations.
I’m willing to give Republicans credit for their ground game, their hard-won gain, and the election they purchased. I’m also putting them on notice. We will fight back. Those anti-education Republicans don’t want people to know Black history because they don’t want our young people to know that we’ve surmounted racism before. In the wake of the Red Summer of 1919, when rabid whites attacked more than 30 Black communities in Washington, DC, Chicago, St. Louis, and other places, the poet, Claude McKay, wrote of this resistance, a fitting anthem for our time:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Fighting back – that’s what’s next.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux, an economist and author based in Washington, DC., is a Trice Edney News Wire columnist: Juliannemalveaux.com