BREAKER - ‘Always Keep Fighting’ - David Pepper on Extraordinary Wins for Voter Rights
Today’s Supreme Court ruling Moore v Harper was a big win! At our Father’s Day ‘Speakeasy’ with David Pepper, he encouraged us all to keep fighting even if we think we can’t win because we just might
***Independence Special through July 4 for new members. Sign up to receive invites to our ‘Speakeasy’ zoom salons and weekly wellness Happy Hour checkins, as well as access to archives and podcasts.***
💘🇺🇸
With today’s breaking news from the Supreme Court, I am revisiting David Pepper’s words from our ‘Speakeasy’ — always keep fighting.
The Bette Dangerous community gets to meet beautiful pro-democracy minds at our ‘Speakeasy’ salons and often at our Tuesday Happy Hour weekly wellness checkins. And for those who missed it or are not yet members, I wrote up this recap of our Father’s Day visit with David Pepper:
Below are excerpts from his visit with us, and they are important because as he predicted — today’s Supreme Court ruling (‘Moore v. Harper’) was a big win for democracy!!!!
As Pepper wrote in his Substack today, the ruling stopped “in its tracks an effort by out-of-control statehouses to seal themselves off from even legal accountability…Today’s 6-3 decision puts the brakes on an aggressive right-wing effort (and a truly lawless theory) to eliminate state court review of state legislatures on a wide variety of elections and democracy matters. In a state-level political world that already faces scant accountability, such a ruling would’ve been a catastrophe for both democracy and the rule of law in countless states.”
At our visit with him last Sunday, I had him respond to the recent SCOTUS ruling that backed a landmark voting rights law — the 5-4 decision tossed out Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama that a lower court said discriminated against Black voters. Below is his full response, which I have not yet published until now:
Oftentimes, these come in twos, and I worried that Moore v Harper was getting all the attention, and this case out of Alabama was not.
The Alabama case was looking like a true disaster for the one part of the Voting Rights Act that still has teeth, which is the part that was stopping the dividing up of majority-minority districts. It looked like that was the one break on that type of gerrymandering was going to lose.
And if you go back in time, when they started applying the Voting Rights Act to the gerrymandering of districts along racial lines, it basically said if a black community is more or less intact, and large enough, that should generally be represented by an African American.
And if they divided in half, so it's not, that breaks the Voting Rights Act. And if you go back to the 60s and 70s when they started applying that ruling now, that revolutionized representation in this country, revolutionized — the numbers are staggering! When you look at how many African American state reps you had 40 years ago, and then 20 years later.
And I would say almost all that, not all, but almost all, that came because of that that Voting Rights Act Rule. It changed America. And my worry, my great worry — if you looked at Judge Roberts, or the other ones, but especially Roberts — he's been so hostile to the Voting Rights Act, I felt like this thing was going down.
And that would have led to an entire new round of divide — Nashville got split three ways last year and that took away a Democratic and African American Congressperson, that's what they had done in Alabama.
In Georgia, in Louisiana, it all happened last year. So this big win not only means that there will be new districts going into 2024, unless they delay it, like Trump's gonna try and do. They may try to delay it, but in the near future, there will be additional districts in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, potentially South Carolina. Because these districts were all approved, and they were bad districts, while waiting this decision.
So there are a bunch of districts that will probably now be democratic districts that fairly represent communities of color that last year didn't exist. But even more important beyond the result for 2024, which probably has Kevin McCarthy really worried — is that it also means that the potential wrong direction… they would have re-gerrymandered as many states as they could have, if they'd been allowed to do this.
So it really is a huge win. And there's speculation — is Roberts getting scared of all the bad press? I don't know… my biggest worry, by the way is that often the way this happens is they give us a good case. And then two weeks later, there's a really bad case, if ‘Moore v Harper goes the wrong way…. this is this crazy one about basically state legislatures not being subject to Supreme Court's of their states. That would be terrible.
But but my optimistic side says the argument Alabama was making to get rid of this Voting Rights Act thing was rogue, it was lawless, but less lawless than the other one, ‘Moore v Harper’’. So if they didn't buy this one, I hope they don't buy the other one. (Breaker: they didn’t!)
But this was a major league victory for representation of minority communities. And overall, this would have been a really poisonous tool that could have made gerrymandering even worse than today. And they did stop it, which was a great, great result.
I explained to the group that this is the reason I brought up the subject — because we must acknowledge the wins when they come through, we take the wins where we get them, and then we keep doing the work.
Pepper also reminded us that this case revealed a very important lesson:
The other reason you keep fighting is this is a case that I though was a loser. So whether it’s challenging an incumbent who’s an extremist or a court case, we got to go everywhere and you never know when you might win. This was a case that most people thought was going the other way. And so thank goodness they didn't let that stop them from bringing it forward. They divided up Alabama — Alabama should have had two majority-minority districts and they gave them one. Thank God they said, ‘We probably won’t win, but we’re bringing the case.’ Even if it feels like an uphill battle — legally, politically, you name it — always keep fighting. You never know when you will have a surprise win.
So now you know why I call Pepper ‘democracy’s coach.’
Keep fighting.
Keep fighting.
Keep fighitng.
Our country is damn well worth it.
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. I am offering special discounts on my ebooks here. Some of you prefer making subsidizing donations via venmo, and it’s always greatly appreciated. Thank you to our many new members and to those upgrading memberships to Founding Member. I am honored.
A private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous@gmail.com. 🥹
Our next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom for paid members is Sunday, July 2, 4 pm PT with the return of Martin Sheil! Marty will update us on Trump’s various legal entanglements and his likely path to unfreedom; Paid members also receive invites to our weekly Bette’s Happy Hour, a wellness checkin every Tuesday, which often features surprise guests. Today, our checkin is at 5 pm PT. Registration link here.
🤍
We just have to see that the battle for democracy is broader. It's deeper.—David Pepper
I need people to see they're on the frontline. Wherever you live, if you’re doing this work, you are the frontline.—David Pepper
Because the true force that will win democracy is all of us figuring this out and going to work. That is literally the thing. That's the majority.—David Pepper
💘
“I say a silent prayer of thanksgiving as I walk upon the earth.”-Audrey Peterman.
“May the viral hope for truth and humanity wash away the chaos of these years.”-S.C., Bette community member
“Something Sacred never dies in almost all of us, who can hear the invitation of Truth…”-words from a Bette Dangerous community member
“Nothing but blue skies from now on…”-Irving Berlin
💘
(I didn’t know America’s rich history of Black lawmakers in post-Civil War US until I met David Pepper. Please read the Byline Supplement report below…Photo: members of the Virginia General Assembly 1887 -1888, Bells Mills Historical Research Society, Chesapeake, Virginia)
