Bernie Rabik: ‘Begin as you wish to proceed’
My mother-in-law, known to some of you, deserves credit for having poignantly reminding me: “Begin as you wish to proceed.”
I believe that some of the best results in American democracy happen on the local level. People who must work together every day to keep local government running can’t abuse one another the way people do on Facebook and so on. They are less likely to act like raging donkeys to someone at a town meeting if tomorrow they might run into him at the gym.
One of the worst stories in our nation’s history happened on Jan. 6, 2021. But one of the best happened a day earlier. On Jan. 5, Georgia voters went to the polls and elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate. Making the outcome even more improbable, the two winners were an African American, Raphael Warnock, and a Jew, Jon Ossoff. With these two historic victories, Democrats gained just enough votes in the Senate to pass the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 million stimulus bill that lifted millions of American families out of the economic misery caused by the pandemic.
On the day of the runoffs, the Washington Post warned that a Democratic victory in Georgia would be a long shot. How did Warnock and Ossoff defy history and win? Donations helped, but it took more than money. It took the organizational genius of Stacey Abrams and the dogged efforts of activists. After witnessing voter suppression in her 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race, Abrams founded an organization called Fair Eight Action to increase voter registration in that state and across the country. On Jan. 5, 2021, Abrams’s dedicated volunteers helped Democrats get the unprecedented turnout they needed.
I urge you to dial back your day-to-day surveillance of national politics, roll up your sleeves, and get to work on the local level. Organize. Register people to vote. Go to town meetings.
And, maybe the most challenging task of all: Try to change people’s minds, one voter at a time.
Organizing on the local level can make a difference. Consider this: I’ve heard that a community organizer can go really far in politics.
The 2020 election told, perhaps, a different story – a better story. It wasn’t a better story just because Trump lost, though that alone would have been cause for dancing naked in the streets.
Despite unprecedented attacks, our democracy worked.
The braking system of democracy is in ragged condition right now, but it’s still there. The brakes work every time we register to vote and help others do the same.
The brakes work when we provide transportation for someone who otherwise wouldn’t make it to the polls. The brakes work when we see a long line of people waiting to vote and offer them water. The brakes work when we go to town meetings, make our voices heard and listen to the voices of others. The brakes work when we organize, fundraise, and canvass. The brakes work when we march, protest, and vote. The brakes work when against the odds, we change one voter’s mind.
We’re the brakes.
My mother-in-law was right on: “Begin as you wish to proceed!”
Bernard Rabik, a Hopewell Township attorney, is a columnist for The Times.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Bernie Rabik: ‘Begin as you wish to proceed’
