This is the third in a diary series I am writing about making fundamental change within our society and within the Democratic Party.
The first essay was about the power of sustainability as the central global issue that brings us together.
The second essay was a criticism of our current Democratic leadership using the start point of my personal experiences with activism around poverty, social justice and human rights.
In this essay I'd like to talk about the fulcrum point of social justice and, in particular, what I'd like to call an integrated approach to social justice. To do so I'm going to discuss John Edwards stands on the death penalty and marriage equality.
I criticized John Edwards in my previous essay for his stands on the death penalty and marriage equality. I don't mean to single him out now, so much as to use his example as a way to get at what we give up when we fail to get behind an integrated social justice approach.
It's no surprise that Edwards takes the stands that he does. Standing up for gay equality and against the death penalty have been standpoints that, let's face it, have been pushed to the fringe of even the progressive wing of the Democratic party. There is no way, however, that you can be progressive and support the death penalty in any circumstance. Nor is there any way to be progressive, and a supporter of social justice, and not understand marriage equality as a basic issue of civil rights.
There is no room for mush here. The fact that so many of us support John Edwards and refuse to push him on the death penalty or marriage equality...or refuse to push him on one or the other of those issues because, perhaps in some misguided sense, we think this is an "issue" does not concern us personally...is a sign of a weakness in our movement.
Where I think we progressives have gone astray is that we have failed to take an integrated approach to social justice and we have let politicians and leaders equivocate in zones where there is no room for equivocation. There is so much to unpack here. Let me dig in.
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the death penalty as a symbol of what is wrong in America
The death penalty is but the most egregious example of the racial and economic inequalities inherent in our criminal justice system. Black and Latino men are disproportionately arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, jailed and executed in this nation. There is no room to equivocate or dance around here: to support the death penalty in America today is to support a racially-biased criminal justice system that denies Americans their civil rights and the basic principle of equality before the law every single day. The reason for this racial bias is not simply the very real racism that pervades our society but also the deliberate and cowardly abandonment of Black and Latino Americans by the Democratic Party through the support of draconian sentencing guidelines and laws that have promoted the rampant expansion of a prison industrial complex that few know or care about unless it personally affects them.
Truth is, the nightmares of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay should come as no surprise in a nation whose President proudly executed citizens as part of his oversight of the Texas criminal justice system. Our lack of fight on this front, our lack of a clarion call in 2000, cost us votes in Florida and had a hand in costing us our civil liberties after 9/11. It's that simple and connected.
You would think that when the Bush Administration packed the Justice Department with lawyers intent on swinging elections through the use of felony convictions to do purges of the voter rolls in swing states that we Democrats would not simply cry foul on its face but stand up on principle to note how racial bias in our criminal justice system had created an inequal situation in the first place. We couldn't do that, however, because it is almost impossible to find a national Democratic candidate for elected office who is ready to address the racial inequalities in our criminal justice system...that is the shameful legacy of our cowardice in the face of the racist Willie Horton ad campaign. It is hardly a surprise then that a leading Presidential candidate who has founded his campaign on justice and equality can't yet bring himself to oppose the death penalty.
There is no reason, ever, for the state to execute anyone. States that do so are right wing. The death penalty is a symptom of a state that views violence as a solution; it is inevitable that this viewpoint infects the policy of an entire nation. It was little surprise that the Bush Administration overturned longstanding US policy on torture, pre-emptive war, and assasination during its tenure. That is consonant with how Bush sees the world; President Bush sees violence as a first option, as a solution. As a matter of principle, violence, however, is never a solution, even if we must sometimes use it as a tool. Violence always comes with a price, even moreso when it is the official policy of our government.
"Progressive" supporters of the death penalty tend to make their support conditional based on exceptions like terrorism, child murder and the murder of peace officers. Timothy McVeigh, however, was a terrorist who murdered children and police officers. We would be a stronger and safer nation today if we had kept McVeigh alive and in prison; we gained nothing by executing him. I have stated this once before but I will do so again here: we would be a much safer nation, and communicate our values to the rest of the world much more clearly and effectively, if the perpetrators of 9/11 were apprehended, tried and convicted in an open court of law and then imprisoned here in the United States in a maximum security prison where their humane treatment could be monitored before the rest of the world. Criminals make their statements with the depravity of their actions; our society, in turn, expresses its values through the actions of our government and our system of justice.
Violence, may, as a last resort, be a tool, but it is never a solution. That is the progressive point of view, and that is why, in my view, we oppose the death penalty on principle.
That being said, given the rampant racial inequality in our criminal justice system, and the fact that every year we come closer and closer to executing citizens for crimes they did not commit, there is no reason, in the United States in 2007, for any American to support the death penalty in any instance. In fact, to countenance the death penalty is a noxious political position that undermines the rest of one's political standpoint. It is an anti-social justice point of view. It is a position we should leave to the right wing.
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marriage equality means that every family should be equal
There is also no way one can be progressive and not support marriage equality. Every family in the United States should be equal. Every household in the United States should be equal and should have equal rights before the law. What part of "all men are created equal" do our fence-sitters and equivocators in the Democratic Party on marriage equality not understand?
Gay equality is such a powerful fulcrum point. We abandon it, and gay Americans, at our political peril. The exact reverse of the "defense of marriage" rhetoric...ie. the idea that "gay marriage" somehow threatens "non-gay marriage"...is true. When we stand up for the equality of every household, of every family in America, we are nurturing and supporting every family unit in our society. Our position in support of gay families is consistent with our support of traditional families and our support of non traditional families. There are far more non traditional households...ie. heterosexual single people with children and unmarried couples who will benefit when our political party takes an unequivocal stance on the equality of every family and household in America.
We progressives are pro-family, pro-person and pro-child. We Democrats are the pro-family party. We don't care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. We do care about investing in families and households in whatever ways we can through investments in the health and education, financial stability and safety of every last one of our citizens, especially our children. Those are our values. Should it matter that a child's mothers are both women? Should it matter that a child's fathers are both men? Should it matter that a young person's father did not marry her mother? In 2007, should we as a society support a couple's ability to live together in domestic partnership as a "straight couple" or a "gay couple" and garner benefits without going to a church to get married? Should marriage be available to two adults in our society who would like to be married?
Yes. These are progressive, pro-family views. Every progressive should share them. Equality is a simple enough concept to understand. We believe in people. The other side believes in big corporations. It's not that hard to understand or explain. We are the party of the American family and we embrace the full complexity of that family.
I am critical, then, of John Edwards' stance on marriage equality. I will admit that members of the Democratic coalition can and do have nuanced views on marriage equality and the death penalty, but progressives can't. These questions are a matter of basic civil rights. Not simply that, but, for progressives, they are pragmatic questions of basic public morality. When John Edwards said that his religious views impede him from supporting marriage equality, I have to question why he should privilege his private religious views over a public discussion of what should be the secular laws of the land.
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Now, I promised to write about an integrated approach to social justice. I've been critical of John Edwards. His positions, however, don't come as any real surprise. They are fairly typical for a Democratic politician. Let me make a deeper point to progressives.
To me there is a natural alliance to be made when it comes to marriage equality and the death penalty. They are both civil rights issues. They call for an integrated approach. Those who believe in marriage equality and equal rights for gay citizens and their families should be foursquare against the death penalty and in favor of progressive reform of the racial inequalities in our criminal justice system including our overgrown prison system and the draconian sentencing guidelines that break up families and destroy the fabric of so many households. The two issues go hand in hand. This is not simply a moral issue, this is a pragmatic issue.
Those who want activists to slow down when we talk about marriage equality will point out ruthlessly that the African-American and Latino communities (or "constituencies" within the Democratic Party) aren't ready to embrace marriage equality. Those who tell civil rights activists to stop mentioning "the criminal justice system" do not see any ways in which a coalition committed to equal rights for all Americans might make common cause. My bet, however, is that these critics haven't even thought about marriage equality in terms of the equality of every American family and how that point of view might resonate through our society as a whole.
I have to ask the doubters who only see the hate and barriers to cooperation, really? In 2007? How are these issues not linked? What does social justice mean if we abandon some of our brothers and sisters in the name of political expedience? What does the American family mean? That's the progressive question.
Let me ask this question. If marriage equality advocates embraced opposition to the death penalty and reform of our criminal justice system as co-equal civil rights issues to marriage equality and gay rights, would those activists find common ground with their brothers and sisters who are working for racial and economic justice in communities of color?
Yes. Undoubtedly so. It might not happen perfectly, but it is happening. I've seen it myself. Let's get real, the hatred and bias against Americans of color and gay Americans comes from the same source. We progressives are advocating a remarkably consistent theme: we are building a society strong and forward-thinking enough that all of us might live in peace together and support and nurture every American family. That's what the majority of American citizens want for our society. It's simple when you get down to it. It's what Dr. King dreamed. How long must we wait to start building that dream? It's a valid question in 2007.
And if John Edwards and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic leadership cannot see this or speak it publicly, our job is to stand up and lead. We in the grassroots determine what is progressive, not them. We have an obligation to point the way.
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Friends, I'm tired of leaders who are afraid of talking about what we all know they believe in. (I'm tired of leaders who vote for 700 mile fences on our borders they don't believe in, too.) When we are afraid to stand up for justice, it's predictable what happens, injustice and inequality win. When we refuse to talk about something basic like racial justice or gay rights or a woman's right to control her own body in unequivocal and uncertain terms we let the other side win.
Is it any coincidence that the GOP and the religious right have rolled back women's rights, gay rights and reinforced a racially-biased criminal justice system over the last decades? Is it any coincidence that the Democratic party stopped being a party of fighting Democrats right around the time that we, uh, stopped fighting for all of our people? For the equal rights of women, for gays, for people of color? For every last family in America? For social justice?
Let me put a very clear point on this. This is a pragmatic political position. John Edwards talks about economic justice and equality of opportunity, but he is not taking the integrated approach to social justice that he could be. What would happen if he did? Would he gain some support in fresh quarters? Would he bring new people into our struggle to win back the White House in 2008? Would this have cascading and empowering after effects in our society as a whole? I think so.
That is my message to you today. Whatever our national candidates do or don't do, we progressives need to take an integrated approach to social justice. We need to be unafraid and unashamed of our political views (and hash them out and debate them here if we must.) If our politicians cannot see this, that should not prevent us from nurturing a new political movement and investing in fresh leaders who do.