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      in US Politics

      McConnell tells CEOs critical of voting restrictions to ‘stay out of politics’

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      Republicans’ standing as the party of corporate America appears to be under threat after Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, told chief executives critical of voting restrictions to “stay out of politics”.Last week Coca-Cola, Delta and dozens of other companies condemned a new election law in Georgia while Major League Baseball announced it would move the All-Star Game from the state in protest.“I found it completely discouraging to find a bunch of corporate CEOs getting in the middle of politics,” McConnell told a press conference in his home state of Kentucky on Monday. “My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don’t pick sides in these big fights.”He warned companies against giving into advocacy campaigns. “It’s jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied, but join in the bullying themselves,” he said.McConnell also issued a written statement that claimed Georgia’s new law has been portrayed unfairly and bemoaned “a coordinated campaign by powerful and wealthy people to mislead and bully the American people”.Railing against the “Outrage-Industrial Complex”, the senator went on: “Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic leftwing signaling.“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the second amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government. Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”He did not elaborate on the warning, but the comments imply a significant rupture after decades in which big business tended to favour Republicans and give them the lion’s share of campaign contributions, enjoying the benefits of low taxes and limited government regulation.Now, however, companies face greater pressure to show they are socially responsible actors and take stand on political issues. The new restrictions in Georgia and elsewhere are widely expected to have a disproportionate impact on voters of colour.The White House denied McConnell’s claim of a coordinated campaign to mislead the public. The press secretary, Jen Psaki, said: “We’ve not asked corporations to specific actions; that’s not our focus here.“Our focus is on continuing to convey that it’s important that voting is easier, not harder, that when there are laws in place that make it harder, we certainly express an opposition to those laws.”Former president Donald Trump spent months falsely claiming that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. He failed in dozens of court challenges and his own attorney general, William Barr, reported no significant irregularities.Even so, legislators in 47 states this year have introduced 361 bills imposing new restrictions on voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Georgia, which Joe Biden won narrowly, will strengthen identification requirements for absentee ballots and make it a crime to offer food or water to voters in a queue.Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines, both major employers in Georgia, were condemned by activists for remaining silent on the issue there but eventually yielded. Ed Bastian, the chief executive of Delta, said: “The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election.”James Quincey, the head of Coca-Cola, described the law as “unacceptable” and a “step backwards”.Some Republicans have suggested embracing a new identity as a party of the working class. Trump issued an angry email statement on Saturday denouncing “WOKE CANCEL CULTURE” and calling for a boycott of Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta and other companies.“Never submit, never give up!” he wrote. “The Radical Left will destroy our Country if we let them. We will not become a Socialist Nation. Happy Easter!” More

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      in World Politics

      Obstructing Governance as a Substitute for Public Policy

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      It is hard to figure out why it seems so difficult to be a white guy in today’s America, even though I am a white guy and should be able to figure it out. The problem seems to be that there are just too many people in America who are not white guys, or even white guys and gals combined. Whenever this feeling seems to overwhelm some white guys, their solution to the perceived problem is to try to preclude something that non-white guys want: entry into the country, voting rights, equal opportunity, racial justice, access to meaningful health care and, way too often, the simple desire to live in peace or continue to live at all.

      So, now that the mass shootings have started again in earnest in America after seemingly taking a small break during the height of pandemic restrictions, it is again mostly white guys out front depriving lots of others of their lives and sense of security. Of course, who can forget the hordes of white guys storming the US Capitol a few months ago trying to prevent their fearless leader from the perceived insult of a permanent return to his beloved mansion in Florida.

      Escaping Thucydides’ Trap: Keeping the Peace Between Rising and Reigning Powers

      READ MORE

      It is worth asking who these white guys are who continue to board their trains to nowhere, callously leaving misery, destruction and even death in their wake. Some are among the really challenged people in America. Among other things, they seem to be intellectually incapable of seeing the connection between incredibly easy access to firearms and mass human slaughter in the American landscape. Find an assault weapon, and you are likely to find a challenged white guy.

      However, those white guys fueling the nation’s resistance to humane immigration policies, to easy access to the polls to affect democratic change, to a racial reckoning and equal opportunity, to universal access to meaningful health care, and even to a comprehensive public health response to the pandemic are all on the same trains to nowhere, along with their gun nut buddies. Tragically, they enable America to fail and they empower each other to add critical mass to their efforts.

      Many of these white people live in neighborhoods with a lot of other white people, only some of whom share their views. Some live in more diverse neighborhoods or pockets of poverty where they often hide their views until, for some reason, they have had enough of “others” and snap. But a whole bunch of these white people were among the 74 million people who voted for Trump in the last election.

      Thwarting Efforts to Govern

      Worse yet, they and their Republican cohorts are now determined to thwart any Biden administration effort to govern. Governing is not the same thing as being a government. Governing is, in its most basic sense, the exercise of authority thru the making of policy and the administration of that policy. President Joe Biden often has the authority to act, but to exercise that authority within America’s constitutional framework requires collaboration with, and the cooperation of, other institutional elements of that framework.

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      Take immigration policy as an example, since there is often talk of “comprehensive immigration reform.” The Biden administration can determine policy and administer elements of that policy through executive action. It can humanely allow Latino children to enter the United States and then make sure that they have a bed, a blanket and enough food to sustain them. After that, figuring out how these immigrant minors should be processed and treated becomes much more complicated, unless it is viewed as a component of a much larger US immigration problem that requires “comprehensive reform.”

      Enter Congress, enter the Republicans in Congress, enter the white guys on the trains to nowhere and that comprehensive reform is almost certainly doomed. So, what happens to the children? With some luck, they disappear into the fabric of the world of undocumented immigrants striving to find a place in a nation where a lot of white guys don’t want them to be.

      Although the immigration example is bad enough, there is more bad news from the white guys on the trains to nowhere. They don’t seem to want anybody but themselves to have a go at voting. It would be nice to say that this effort will fail in that exceptional “model democracy” known as America. But hold on, the white guys have a plan: You change the voting rules to get better results. This is easier than changing the policies, programs and personalities that many of the voters rejected under the old rules.

      Just to make sure that nobody mistook the latest white guy effort at voter suppression for a serious effort to make voting easier, those wacky Republicans in the Georgia legislature, aided and abetted by the Republican governor, just criminalized providing food and water to their fellow citizens waiting in voting lines. That is, of course, only part of what they did, but enough to fully demonstrate the lengths to which the white guys on the trains to nowhere will go to preserve their shrinking political influence.

      You see, prior voting practices in Georgia often left voters of color waiting in longer lines than their white counterparts, so instead of legislating to reduce wait times for everybody, someone came up with the bright idea of making it harder to wait in line. (This plan will work even better if the white guys also make it a crime to sell those little cooler bags to anyone who isn’t a white guy.)

      The Key That Unlocks the Door

      I wish I were making this up, but I am not. The Biden administration’s capacity to govern is being challenged not by people who have a sincere agenda of constructive reform for the nation, but by those same kind of white guys on their trains to nowhere who have just criminalized giving grandma a drink of water while she waits in line to vote.

      Even some things as potentially lifesaving for white guys as wearing masks and seeking COVID-19 vaccines seem challenging to way too many of them. While they should overwhelmingly embrace these measures if for no other reason than if only people of color get vaccinated and white guys die off, their situation gets even more desperate. Yet the world has watched while many white guys on their trains to nowhere have overtly contributed to tens of thousands of COVID deaths in the US and continue to try to thwart coordinated government efforts to address the nation’s pandemic and public health crisis.

      For some reason, even their significant contribution to the deaths of so many has failed to pause the white guys on their trains to nowhere long enough to stand back so that those of good will in government have the space they need to function and the support they need to govern.

      For as long as the mindless obstruction continues, the nation’s governmental institutions will be significantly impeded from pursuing the long-delayed promise of a more just and equitable America. And it will be that much harder to demonstrate that good government is the key that unlocks the door.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Republican congressman condemned over Islamophobic tweet to Ilhan Omar

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      A Republican congressman responded to Ilhan Omar’s expression of grief about the attack at the US Capitol on Friday by comparing it to the 9/11 attacks.A police officer was killed when a suspect rammed him and another officer with his car outside the Capitol on Friday. The suspect wielded a knife and was shot dead. The other officer hit by the car survived.The attack came not quite three months after supporters of Donald Trump attacked the Capitol on 6 January, seeking to overturn the election. A police officer was one of five people who died as a direct result.Omar was at the Capitol that day. In January, she told the Guardian she “didn’t know if I would make it out” and had called her ex-husband “to make sure he would continue to tell my children that I loved them if I didn’t make it out”.Security has been heightened and the attack on Friday provoked confusion and fear.Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, tweeted: “Heartbroken to learn another [police officer] was killed while protecting the Capitol. My thoughts and prayers go out to the officer’s family and the entire Capitol police force. The death toll would have been worse if the assailant had an AR-15 [assault rifle] instead of a knife.”In response, Congressman Greg Murphy of North Carolina wrote: “Would have been worse if they had been flying planes into the buildings also.”Omar, who came to the US from Somalia as a child, is one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress.Murphy was widely rebuked.“You just invoked Sept 11 to attack a Muslim member of Congress,” wrote the North Carolina state senator Jeff Jackson, a Democrat. “I knew you a little when you were in the state legislature. This is well beneath you. It doesn’t matter how strongly you disagree with her on policy, you should represent our state better than this.”Robert S McCaw, director of government affairs for the Council on Islamic Relations (Cair), said Murphy’s tweet was “disrespectful to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, to their families and to the countless Muslim and other minority hate crime victims who were targeted in the wake of 9/11. His bigoted comments only serve to perpetuate the climate of hate that we are witnessing nationwide.”McCaw also said he hoped “Murphy’s Republican colleagues will condemn this Islamophobic attack and not just look the other way as they did when Muslim members of Congress were attacked similarly in the past.”The tweet was deleted.A Charlotte TV station, WITN, reported that Murphy has tweeted and deleted before. In October, he called now vice-president Kamala Harris “a walking disaster … only picked for her color and her race … is that how we pick our leaders now in America?”Murphy did not immediately comment.On Saturday, however, one Twitter user responding to a tweet by the congressman about Covid and immigration told Murphy he followed “Typical [Republican] MO. Never take the high road. Never provide a solution to the issue. ALWAYS stoke division.”“Awww,” replied Murphy, who was a doctor before entering Congress and worked as a medical missionary. “Sorry I triggered you …” More

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      in US Politics

      How Biden's $2tn infrastructure plan seeks to achieve racial justice

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      Joe Biden has said his $2tn plan to rebuild America’s “crumbling” roads, bridges, railways and other infrastructure would rival the space race in its ambition and deliver economic and social change on a scale as grand as the New Deal. The president has also vowed his “once-in-a-generation” investment will reverse long-standing racial disparities exacerbated by past national mobilizations.Embedded in his sprawling infrastructure agenda, the first part of which Biden unveiled this week, are hundreds of billions of dollars dedicated to projects and investments the administration says will advance racial equity in employment, housing, transportation, healthcare and education, while improving economic outcomes for communities of color.“This plan is important, not only for what and how it builds but it’s also important to where we build,” Biden said at a union carpenters’ training facility outside Pittsburgh last week. “It includes everyone, regardless of your race or your zip code.”His proposal would replace lead pipes and service lines that have disproportionately harmed Black children; reduce air pollution that has long harmed Black and Latino neighborhoods near ports and power plants; “reconnect” neighborhoods cut off by previous transportation projects; expand affordable housing options to allow more families of color to buy homes, build wealth and eliminate exclusionary zoning laws; rebuild the public housing system; and prioritize investments in “frontline” communities whose residents are predominantly people of color often first- and worst-affected by climate change and environmental disaster.The plan also allocates $100m in workforce development programs targeting historically underserved communities and $20m for upgrading historically Black college and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and quadruples funding for the Manufacturing Extensions Partnership to boost investment in “minority owned and rurally located” businesses.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party (WFP), said it was clear Biden had been listening to activists and understood the interlocking challenges of racial injustice, climate change and economic inequality.“This is not race-neutral – it’s actually pretty aggressive and specific,” he said, noting the coalition of Black voters and women who helped Biden clinch the Democratic nomination and win the White House.Perhaps the boldest pieces of the proposal is a $400bn investment in care for elderly and disabled Americans. In his speech, Biden said his agenda would create jobs and lift wages and benefits for the millions of “unseen, underpaid and undervalued” caregivers, predominantly women of color.Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, called it “one of the single most impactful plans to address racial and gender inequity in our economy”.Poo said the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately hurt women and people of color, showed just how critical care workers are to the wellbeing of the nation. And yet many of these workers still struggle to care for themselves and their families.Poo believes Biden’s plan can do for caregiving and the economy what past jobs programs did for manufacturing, turning dangerous, low-wage jobs into opportunities for upward mobility and security. Home care workers have been excluded from labor protections – Poo said this effort places them at the forefront.“There’s nothing more fundamental and enabling to our economy than having good care for families,” she said. “Without that, nothing else can function – we can’t even build roads, bridges and tunnels without care.”Biden’s plan also provides for $100bn for high-speed broadband internet alongside provisions to improve access and affordability, which White House officials say will help to close the digital divide between white and Black and Latino families.“The internet is a tool that all of us rely upon,” said Angela Siefer, executive director at National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “And when certain segments of the population, particularly those who have been historically left out, don’t have access to the tools, they fall even further behind.”Biden said his plan would help drive down costs by increasing competition and providing short-term subsidies for low-income households. Siefer said these measures are important, but she was skeptical rates would fall enough to make high-speed internet affordable for low-income families without more permanent subsidies.Improving digital literacy is also critical to confronting racial inequality, Siefer said, adding: “To really achieve equity, we have to get beyond the thinking: let’s just make it available.”The proposal also includes $5bn for community based violence-prevention programs, an investment Black and Latino activists have long argued will help reduce the impact of gun violence.The administration has suggested additional efforts to close the racial wealth gap, like universal pre-kindergarten, affordable higher education and improved family leave, will come in the second piece of what could be a $4tn program.Republicans accuse Biden of delivering a “Trojan Horse” to fund progressive initiatives.“Biden’s plan includes hundreds of billions of spending on leftwing policies and blue-state priorities,” the Republican National Committee said. It singled out parts of the bill that aim to tackle racial and gender inequality, such as “$400bn for an ‘unrelated’ program for home care that ‘was a top demand of some union groups’.”While many senior Democrats welcomed the plan, many progressives have said it doesn’t go far enough. They have called for $10tn over the next decade to confront climate change, including more robust investments in renewable energy and a target of shifting the US to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.Biden has said he is open to negotiation and hopes he can attract Republicans to the plan. The president suggested Republicans would rush to act if they learned the drinking water on Capitol Hill flowed through lead pipes.As Congress begins the process of turning Biden’s blueprint into legislation, progressive groups are mounting a campaign to pressure lawmakers to embrace an even more ambitious agenda. The WFP is part of a coalition of groups staging protests to demand Congress deliver “transformational economic recovery”.“If you’re going to be big and bold, be big and bold and solve the problem fully,” Mitchell said. “We are at a crisis moment and we won’t get another shot.” More

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      in US Politics

      Who needs Twitter? Trump wishes happy Easter to 'radical left crazies'

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      Donald Trump is reportedly working on a social media platform of his own, after being banned from Twitter and Facebook for inciting the Capitol riot.He has also launched a new website, which presents a highly selective history of his single term in power and offers the chance to book appearances or personal greetings.But Trump has also said he may not need his new platform, because the short, often tweet-length statements he now propels into journalists’ inboxes from Mar-a-Lago in Florida communicate his views as effectively as any tweet ever could.On Sunday the former president seemed to test the theory, mimicking world leaders including Pope Francis, if not echoing their sense of dignity and appeals for peace on a major religious holiday, by releasing a statement to mark Easter Sunday.“Happy Easter to ALL,” Trump said, “including the Radical Left CRAZIES who rigged our Presidential Election, and want to destroy our Country!”The presidential election was not rigged, however often Trump repeats a lie repeatedly thrown out of court. Joe Biden beat him by more than 7m votes and by 306-232 in the electoral college.But for Trump supporters, the statement may have carried a raucous echo of what were for them happier times, when he regularly tweeted diplomatic communiqués such as: “Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest – and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.”Tellingly, Trump’s Easter statement did not set off the kind of explosions in the news media his tweets once did. Instead of prompting deadline scrambles and front-page headlines, it seemed to engender a sort of mild ennui.“Jesus couldn’t have said it any better,” wrote Ken Vogel of the New York Times.The writer Robert Schlesinger asked: “What is the phrase my religious friends use when in doubt? What would Jesus whine?”David Frum, once a speechwriter for George W Bush, now a prominent Trump critic on the American right, called it “an Easter Sunday message of resentment and rage”. “It’s an enduring good joke,” he added, “that Donald Trump has zero understanding of Christian faith – and that if he ever did understand it, he would 100% oppose and reject it.”A few hours later, Trump tried again. This time, his statement simply said: “Happy Easter!” More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans claim Biden $2tn infrastructure plan a partisan tax hike

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      Republicans opposed to Joe Biden’s proposed $2tn infrastructure bill claimed on Sunday that it was effectively a partisan tax hike that allocated too much money to electric vehicles and other environmental initiatives.On CNN’s State of the Union, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves was asked if his state could use some of the $100bn Biden proposes to spend on fixing roads and bridges neglected for decades amid gridlock in Washington and paralyzed public spending.Yes, he said. But.“There’s no doubt that Mississippi could use our fair share of $100bn,” Reeves said. “The problem with this particular plan, though, is although the Biden administration is calling it an infrastructure plan, it looks more like a $2tn tax hike plan, to me. That’s going to lead to significant challenges in our economy, it’s going to lead to a slowing GDP … it’s going to lead to Americans losing significant numbers of jobs.”Biden proposes funding his plan by raising corporate tax rates and making it more difficult for corporations to utilize offshore tax shelters.Reeves had other complaints. While Biden proposes to spend billions on roads and bridges, he said, he also proposes to “spend more than that on the combination of Amtrak [railways] and public transit. And what’s even worse, [Biden’s bill] spends $100bn on clean water, which Mississippi could certainly use, but it spends more than that … to subsidize electric vehicles.“That is a political statement. It’s not a statement on trying to improve our infrastructure in America. And so it looks more like the Green New Deal than it looks like an infrastructure plan.”The Green New Deal is a set of policy priorities championed by prominent progressives including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a way to meet looming environmental challenges while boosting the economy and reducing inequality. It is not enacted law or a formal part of Biden’s policy plans. Nonetheless, Republicans from Donald Trump down have seized on it, claiming it represents a determination to take away gas-guzzling cars and even the right to eat meat.On ABC’s This Week, the Missouri Republican senator Roy Blunt asked: “Why would you pass up the opportunity here to focus on roads, bridges, what’s happening underground, as well as above the ground on infrastructure, broadband, all of which wouldn’t be 40% of this package?“There’s more in the package for charging stations for electric vehicles … than there is for roads, bridges and airports and ports. When people think about infrastructure, they’re thinking about roads, bridges, ports and airports.”The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said this week he would “fight them every step of the way because I think this is the wrong prescription for America. That package that they’re putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side.”Democrats could attempt to pass the package using budget reconciliation, a procedure that allows for a simple Senate majority rather than 60 votes. But even if successful it would mean abandoning portions of the plan that do not impact taxes and spending.Biden has repeatedly emphasized the need for bipartisanship. Politicians from both sides have claimed willingness to reach across the aisle.Reeves told CNN he “believes we can come up with a plan” but opposes the tax-funded price-tag. Blunt said it was “very unlikely” Republicans would vote to reverse Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts, suggesting instead “new funding sources, figuring out how if you’re going to spend all this money on electric vehicles, which I think is part of the future, we need to figure out how electric vehicles pay for using the system just like gas-powered vehicles have always paid for it with a gas tax.”Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, vowed to work with Republicans.“I’ve got a lot of respect for Senator Blunt,” he told ABC, “but I’m going to work to try to persuade him that electrical vehicle charging infrastructure is absolutely a core part of how Americans are going to need to get around in the future, and not the distant, far off future, but right now.Asked if it was “a realistic prospect to expect Republicans are going to come around”, Buttigieg said: “I think it can be. I’m having a lot of conversations with Republicans in the House and Senate who have been wanting to do something big on infrastructure for years. We may not agree about every piece of it, but this is one area where the American people absolutely want to see us get it done.”The Republican Mississippi senator Roger Wicker told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I’m all for working with the administration on an infrastructure bill. And let me tell you, I think I can work with Pete Buttigieg. I spoke to him the day he was nominated. We’ve been trading phone messages for the last three or four days in an effort to talk about this bill. I think Pete and I could come up with an infrastructure bill.”But Wicker also brought out the stumbling block to such thoughts of progress.“What the president proposed this week is not an infrastructure bill,” he said. “It’s a huge tax increase, for one thing.” More

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      in US Politics

      Lawmaker Park Cannon on Georgia voting law: ‘A regression of our rights is happening’

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      When the governor of Georgia recently signed sweeping new voting restrictions into law, Park Cannon, a 29-year-old state representative from Atlanta, was knocking on his door.Cannon wanted to witness Brian Kemp signing the bill, but was denied entry. She wound up handcuffed, dragged out of the state capitol and charged with two felonies, obstruction of law enforcement and disruption of the general assembly.Images of her arrest spread across the world, juxtaposed with an image of Kemp signing the bill surrounded by white men and under a picture of a slave plantation. It was a remarkably powerful echo of the Jim Crow era – and the fight over voting rights in America.The Guardian spoke with Cannon about her arrest and Georgia’s new voting law.Guardian: I wanted to ask how you’re doing and what the last week has been like.Park Cannon: Well, thank you for asking first of all. As a Black woman, self-care is a buzzword many of us are trying to internalize and to act on. So I’m very blessed in this moment to be spending time with family. We do not have a full medical report on my injuries yet. However, I remain hopeful that I will be healed soon and back with the people.Take me back to last Thursday night and walk me through what happened. What was going through your mind?I am internally elected as the [state Democratic] caucus secretary, like Rosa Parks was with the [local] NAACP. In that role, my job has been to witness, and take minutes, on legislative occurrences such as bill signings. I have bill-signing pens from Governor Kemp as well as Governor [Nathan] Deal to prove this. And these bills, as they are enacted into law, they matter to Georgians. They matter to the issues that we represent.When I was notified, irregularly, that Senate bill 202 was being signed, I was knocking at the door as I regularly do. I was looking to law enforcement to say the protocol and for us to be able to enter the room and sign the bills … all that I wanted to do was get information back to members.I wanted to without a doubt be a witness to Senate bill 202 being signed because I had been a part of the process.Let me ask about that picture of Governor Kemp surrounded by six white men, underneath a picture of a plantation. What was it like for you to see that picture?When I see the photo of Kemp, in his office, perched at his desk, strategically positioned under a disgraceful painting of a south Georgia plantation, I immediately think about the Georgians who have reached out to me to say, ‘Oh my gosh, my family had been working at that location for years.’ And on top of that, he was flanked by a group of six white legislators, all males. In one stroke of the pen, there was an erasure of decades of sacrifices, marches … as well as the tears that Georgians have shed as they vote during perilous times.So when I juxtapose that with the photo of [my] unlawful arrest, it’s painful. Both physically and emotionally. I truly feel as if time is moving in slow motion.What do you mean by that?It feels as though a regression of our rights is happening. And there are so many necessitated steps to revive our democracy. But we want to move forward, and we want to be united, so we need for Americans to keep knocking.Why was it important for you to be in that room?This would not be my first time being the only person of color or Black woman in the room.As the secretary for 78 members, it is my job to be present for meetings, bill signings, press conferences and general assembly sessions so the professionalism of our state is protected. So to see the continued lack of professionalism, and lack of regard for people’s voting rights, it reflects the lack of concern other elected officials have for the civil rights and the human rights of Black and brown citizens.The provisions in the bill that a Georgian is not able to bring water or food to their friends or family when they’re waiting in line – that’s a human rights violation. Being in the room to witness these violations is more critical now than ever.I’m curious if you’ve heard from the governor’s office about this, or from the speaker or anyone who was in the room.Gerald Griggs, Cannon’s attorney: We haven’t heard from the governor, the speaker or anyone in relation to this. We’re in the process of reaching out to the district attorney, we’ve heard from her. But as far as the members that were in the room, we haven’t anything from them, save for the public comments the governor has made.What have you made of what has unfolded this week with businesses taking a hard line against these bills and Republicans saying concerns are misinformed and exaggerated?Park Cannon: Make no mistake, Georgians understand corporate accountability. The reason we are called the No1 state to do business by the governor himself is because we are positioned as an international state with a capital city too busy to hate. What that means for Georgians is that corporate accountability is a historical engagement. This is nothing new.I’m glad people are watching. I’m glad the companies are hearing the people. I trust others will keep knocking.This video of what happened to you has been seen around the world. What do you want people to know?This is America. This is not about Republican or Democrat. This is about all of our rights. We must not lose sight of this issue. We must protect our right to vote. I encourage you to keep knocking.This interview has been condensed and edited More