The insurrection we witnessed on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, as a mob including white supremacists stormed our nation’s capital to stage a coup, was the culmination of President Trump, his enablers, and supporters slowly chipping away at our democracy. For the past several years, we’ve seen him downgrade our country with dangerous and radicalized rhetoric. He intentionally deepened and exacerbated division along racial, cultural, and economic lines. His continuous and unfounded assertion that the presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen” was nothing more than a ploy to provoke his base and cause an implosion of our democracy so that he can seize power. The veil on our fragile nation has been lifted at the expense of so many lives. It is more evident than ever before that democracy reform must happen, and it must happen now.
Time and time again, Donald Trump and his enablers have shown us that they prioritize power over people, profits over justice, and politics over the greater good. Since its founding, our democracy has favored the privileged. In the wake of a global pandemic and an attempted coup, many found out what Black people already knew: the sustained presence of historical inequality and longstanding policies have disproportionately impacted the Black community. What has been recognized by Black people for decades is now being fully understood by others. This country rarely gets it right when dealing with the vestiges of its stolen people’s history and continues to falter on its progress to rectify its transgressions. If we are indeed a leader on the world stage, we must embody equality and justice for all. To do that requires a comprehensive and ongoing conversation about our ills and the pathway to redemption.
