Dear friends across Wisconsin,
This is a moment of gut-wrenching darkness and trauma in our republic. And, impossibly, a moment of hope.
Yesterday, we saw the President of the United States incite a violent insurrection.
We saw a seditious mob, egged on directly by the president and acting on lies and conspiracy theorists advanced by Republicans including Ron Johnson, Tom Tiffany, and Scott Fitzgerald, use force to overrun and desecrate the United States Capitol.
We watched US Capitol Police officers utterly fail to protect the inner sanctums of our democratic system. Some officers were injured fighting back against the rioters. Others actively posed for selfies with the insurrectionists and, it appears from video footage, opened gates to welcome their coup. The President called his violent supporters to DC, and his security forces—who turned out with militarized force and brutalized peaceful protestors during the uprising for racial justice this summer—allowed the mob to take the Capitol with only token resistance.
The vast majority of the insurrectionists—nearly all of them white, many bearing Confederate and white supremacist flags, t-shirts, and tattoos—walked away free, some carrying trophies ripped from Speaker Pelosi’s office and Congressional chambers. All this, the day after Kenosha’s District Attorney announced, in a decision that stains our justice system and conscience as a state, that no charges would be brought to any of the officers involved with shooting Jacob Blake seven times in front of his children.
We can’t say “this isn’t America.” It’s the very worst of America, rampaging as the world weeps.
We must become better than this.
And—amidst this heartbreaking and frightening nightmare, there are reminders that we can be better than this. That the best of America still lives.
The insurrection failed. The terrorists lost. The coup collapsed. Congress confirmed the elector count. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in on January 20.
The calls for accountability, and measures to protect American democracy in the final two weeks of this administration, have begun. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer—and many others, including Reps. Moore and Pocan—have called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, and threatened rapid impeachment if this does not occur.
And most singularly, we just experienced a near political miracle: Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have won the two Senate runoffs in Georgia. Mitch McConnell will lose his gavel. Kamala Harris, serving a President of the Senate in her capacity as Vice President of the United States, will hold the tie-breaking vote in the nation’s highest legislative chamber.
The victories in Georgia on Tuesday, like the victories in Georgia and Wisconsin on November 3, are triumphs of democracy—and of patient, intensive, visionary organizing by thousands of heroes who refused, against all odds, to give up. That work, that, faith, that hope, opens the gates towards a future of inclusive democracy. And it turns us away from this moment of chaos, brutality, and attempted tyranny. The fury of democracy’s foes has erupted specifically because of the triumph of those who believe America is for all of us. We chanted it: “I believe that we will win.” Their violence cannot change the truth. In this moment, we have won.
That victory doesn’t erase the pain. That victory will not cure Jacob Blake’s paralysis, or the searing demonstration to ourselves and the world that American democracy is not now the shining beacon that so many have claimed it to be.
But that victory is why the work is worth it. It’s why it’s worth it to seek accountability. It’s why it’s worth it to give it our all as we build back better. As we heal stronger.
We have two weeks until the inaugural. We don’t know what these weeks will bring. But we know what kind of country and democracy we are trying to build, we know that our labors have meaning and value, and we know that this broken world can be changed for the better. That knowledge will ground us. And we will carry each other forward.
With hope and gratitude,
Ben Winkler
Chair, Democratic Party of Wisconsin
What can you do?
- Call your representatives – let them know your thoughts on the events of this week and what actions you’d like them to take including
- Invoking the 25th Amendment
- Impeachment
- Holding insurrectionists responsible, both the general public and those holding public office
- Justice for Jacob Blake
- Watch for information on upcoming inauguration activities
Thank you! The Democratic Party of Door County!
