A prayer for democracy
Well, my prayers were answered. Joe and Kamala will be our next President and Vice President.
Winning the votes to save the soul of America wasn’t easy and it won’t be easy to convince Donald Trump he lost. Wild claims of voter fraud with no evidence to back it up brought rebukes from judges even Trump himself appointed. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and their team worked hard but, in the end, it was Trump who did himself in. His threats to our democracy and view of who we are as Americans, his refusal to move away from the Confederate flag, white supremacists, or to acknowledge that Black lives do matter motivated progressives to vote in record numbers. President Trump’s wild claims and false assertions proved too much for some Republicans and Independents who, in the end, though it was just time for Donald Trump to go. Yet, Trump’s attacks on immigrants, his blunt and rude insistence that our NATO Allies contribute more to their mutual defense, and his proclamation about trade imbalances and creating jobs at home met with the approval of some 49% of voters.
So now we are on a new journey to reset America’s moral compass and to restore and protect our democracy. While we can breathe somewhat more easily, just because we voted in greater numbers than ever before, we can’t sit back and leave everything to Joe and Kamala. We have to stay involved, remain active, and make our voices heard to ensure they stay true to the promises that won our votes.
The 2020 election really shouldn’t have been about Donald Trump and what he failed to do, but what could be done that would make America and the world a better place.
The Corona virus, because it could have been dealt with so differently, played a role, because it was a dramatic, deadly, example of President Trump’s nefarious untruths and surrealism.
While many voters were concerned about their health, working families didn’t go to sleep at night worrying about Donald Trump. They were worried about their children, their parents, and paying their bills. They want a better life for their children, and they know it starts with education. They want their parents to live out the remainder of their lives without stressing over how they can afford prescription drugs, food, and a place to live.
We live in the richest country in the world. No one should go to bed hungry, homeless or without healthcare — not the poor, not those physically or mentally challenged, nor those in prison. Our democracy should work for us all.
I believe every child, regardless of where they’re born or to whom, regardless of their parents’ economic status, should have the hope and dream of reaching their God-given potential. It all starts with education. Every child should have the right to a head start with free, early childhood pre-K education. Every child, whether citizen or immigrant, should have the hope and dream of being able to get free higher education, whether it’s job training or college. Giving children the security of being able to go to college, regardless of their family’s financial or legal status, will help keep them in school, out of trouble and make them productive citizens. This is in America’s best interest.
So, our new president must work for universal early learning and free higher education and push for after-school jobs or job training for every student who wants it.
President Biden must retire student loans. It’s time to lift this weight off students’ shoulders so they can move on with their lives and help jump-start our economy.
In addition to educational opportunities, President Biden must expand economic opportunities. It starts with a fair tax system. Working families are penalized by our current tax structure. Something is wrong when three families have wealth equal to half of the U.S. population. Something is wrong when the top 1 percent have more combined wealth than 92 percent at the bottom! Something is wrong when large profitable corporations pay nothing in taxes, while working families are sucked dry. It’s time for billionaires, millionaires, and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes just like the rest of us do.
Raising revenue to pay for progress starts with creating a fair tax system.
Our president must work for more and better-paying jobs and recruit new manufacturers and new technologies.
We need our president to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Working families are struggling to feed their children and to prepare for their children’s futures. As it now stands, it falls on the government to create policies that fill the gap. Increased wages will lower debt, increase spending, and boost our economy.
It’s time for our president to create new jobs and new uses of renewable energy and work to change farming practices to end the use of pesticides and save our planet from the climate catastrophe we face.
We must rebuild our infrastructure, our roads and bridges, protect our coastal waters, rivers, lakes and streams, provide clean water, build wastewater treatment plants, and end the use of fossil fuels. By investing in twenty-first-century infrastructure, we can put more people to work, create after-school jobs to keep kids out of trouble.
Joe Biden knows healthcare must be a right for all citizens, not just those who can scrape up enough to pay the premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.
Joe Biden will be a president who is civil, couth, and a role model for our children — someone we respect and look up to, while he respects the rights of women and understands history, understands the importance of Freedom of Speech to our democracy, and respects the role of the media in preserving it.
Now, Joe Biden must fight for the “soul of our democracy”, for equal justice — economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice — and for criminal justice reform.
Our justice system is broken when we have two million people locked up — many who are nonviolent, first-time offenders. It’s broken when we spend nearly 200 billion a year to warehouse them. It’s broken when people enter prison without job skills and leave the same way.
The excessive use of force by police was a flash point in the Presidential election in the U.S. while throughout the world people spontaneously protested in empathy with the George Floyd family and in recognition that Black Lives do indeed matter.
So how do we ensure a measure of justice for families of Blacks who are victims of the excessive use of force by police?
The use of excessive force by police resulting in the death of Black citizens is not unusual, yet holding them accountable is.
Police and prosecutors too often view themselves as wearing the same jersey-playing on the same team- the government’s team. Prosecutors protect police.
Because of a Supreme Court decision in 1976 (Imbler v Pachman) and the Federal Tort Claims Act provided by Congress, prosecutors have immunity from civil ability, so they can and do act with impunity. Prosecutors can present false evidence or induce false testimony or withhold exculpatory evidence in order to get an indictment…or not… in a grand jury, because they are
secret proceedings, so prosecutors have free reign. There’s no judge or lawyer for the victim’s family present.
So, how best to ensure justice in a grand jury?
First, the victim’s family should have the right to have a lawyer present in the grand jury as a check on truth.
Secondly, to voir dire…to question potential jurors to ensure fairness. Currently, no one ensures racially balanced, or neutral jurors in a grand jury setting.
Third, the “victim’s” lawyer would ensure that all evidence is presented. They could object to evidence or testimony proposed by the government and offer evidence or testimony for the victim. Such issues would be decided by a judge, the same as in a civil deposition. If this “due process” safeguard is important where monetary damages are at stake in a civil proceeding, surely this due process safeguard should be in place where someone’s life is at issue.
Finally, while not identifying members of the grand jury, the family member’s lawyer would make a public report of what transpired. A well-informed public, strengthens public faith in our justice system and in our democracy.
Holding police accountable will not only provide a measure of justice, but it will also help curtail the excessive use of force.
Criminal justice reform should remain in the national dialogue after the inauguration. It has been well demonstrated that our system of justice is capable of political abuse. Now, we must recognize and correct errors.
We must restore justice, preserve our democracy, protect the integrity of our elections, and balance the scales of justice to end mass incarceration.
America can be everything we want it to be, everything we can imagine it can and it should be, but it depends on us. We must be able to believe and trust those whom we elect, then work with them to accomplish the ideals and promises that won our votes. We must make sure they stay true to their commitment. We must hold them accountable for the promises made in their campaign.
President Biden has seen the U.S. in too many “political” wars — Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — costing hundreds of thousands of soldier and civilian sacrifices and trillions of dollars. Presidents who are ignorant or arrogant, who fail to heed the lessons of history, or who put their own political popularity over the lives of our soldiers or innocent civilians should never be elected.
Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, put it this way: “Politics like war is too important to be left to the professionals.” I’d like to think he meant the voices of citizens should be heard.
To preserve our democracy, all of us must be “soldiers” by voting.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said our right to vote is “our most precious right” because all of our freedoms are impacted by the people we elect. Everything from fixing potholes to peace depends on who we elect to public office.
I wrote my book, Stealing Our Democracy, to kickstart a conversation about issues important to saving our democracy.
While this presidential election was not stolen, I’m living proof elections CAN be stolen, and not just by Russians. In addition to securing borders, we need to secure our elections. We need to vote on paper ballots that can be hand-counted when there is a question of accuracy. Elections must be capable of being publicly audited.
As voters we must be undaunted, we must be proactive and provocative. The struggle to restore justice and preserve our democracy depends on us. We must never ever give up. We must be willing to get into the arena again and again to VOTE for the soul of our democracy.
I thank every voter, commend you, and encourage you to keep working for the ideals you hold dear, working for candidates in whom you believe and trust, and then work to ensure they hold true to the promises they made that encouraged our vote.
-Don Siegelman
Don Siegelman is the only politician in Alabama history to hold all the state’s top four offices: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State. Alabama’s first Catholic governor and the first “New South” progressive governor in the state’s post-Civil Rights Era, a staunch Democrat, Siegelman was a potential 2004 presidential candidate. His success in politics put him in the crosshairs of powerful Republicans, both within the state and nationally
