Shouldn't Laws Made For Us Also Be Made With Us?

Baptist News Global: Desantis and Florida Legislature Pretty Much Want to Control Everyone 

American students reach a point in their educational experience, usually in the eighth grade, where they must pass their first standardized exam on the United States Constitution.  Throughout my twenty years in the classroom, I taught my fair share of America's eighth graders, getting several hundred of them, over the years, to the point where they could pass this exam and move on to high school.  I also took many of those students, again numbering in the hundreds, on a class field trip to Washington, D.C. to help support this instruction and reinforce what they learned.  

As a result of all of that educational experience, I've taken students into virtually every government building in Washington, including the White House during several Presidential administrations, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and into the maze of hallways in the Senate and House office buildings to meet the people who support the work of their Senators and Representatives, along with meeting some of the members themselves.  We've eaten lunch in the cafeteria in the Supreme Court building, the basement of the House office building and in the food court of the Department of Commerce.  My students were up on their government class experience enough to recognize members of Congress eating their lunch in the same place.  

My goal was not just for them to do well enough on the test to pass it.  I wanted them to learn about the constitution, the history behind its development, the reasoning that went into it by the founders who wrote it, debating over minutia as they put it together, out of their own experience which was significantly affected by their experience as colonists under British rule, as well as their realization that the remoteness of their location in the world was giving them an opportunity to experience a kind of human liberty that no one else in the world had ever experienced together, as a people.  I wanted them to know where their freedom came from, what it looked like, and what they had to do to keep it.  

I didn't want them to ever take the freedom they had for granted.  I wanted them to know that their education, which enabled them to be an informed participant in their government, and casting an informed ballot, was the key to maintaining their freedom.  

So what I want to know, when I see articles like the one I posted above. is where are the students who were taught constitution and had to pass that exam when all of this is going on?  Where are the protests, the news stories, interviews, calls for reform?  Didn't these kids learn their constitution in eighth grade?

Shouldn't Laws Made For Us Also Be Made With Us?  

Why are Republican fascists in states like Texas and Florida, attacking the content of the curriculum of the public school system?  Because younger voters engaging and being active have been their undoing.  Issues have brought young voters out in record numbers.  Democrats sometimes sleep through the midterms, and we still did some of that this time, taking the standard polls and predictions for granted and preparing ourselves for the status quo.  A little bit more re-organizing of the money we raised and some focus on congressional districts that were on the margins and a turnout, in about a dozen congressional districts, that was just 1% or 2% higher than we got, and we'd still have our majority in the house.  

The barrage, and that's exactly what it has been, of anti-educational, anti-freedom legislation that has poured out of Florida like a lava flow, should be the campaign theme of every Democrat who runs for office in that state in the next cycle, whether it is city councils and school boards, homeowner associations and golf course administrators, or the state legislature or congress.  Lawsuits take time, but so much of this stuff is so blatantly unconstitutional, the Democratic party needs to find ways to challenge everything and give at least some of what it raises to fighting it off in the courts.  

But the bottom line is making sure that our students in schools, all of them, know and understand that they live in a Democracy, and that it is their responsibility to participate in it, so that they are, as intended, the primary influence behind the laws that are made.  It's pretty obvious that laws that are now being made are about controlling people and the only way those laws will be successfully enforced, and stay on the books, is if those who are being controlled by them allow it to happen.  

The only way those laws will be successfully enforced, and stay on the books, is if those who are being controlled by them allow it to happen.  

And it's easier to make sure that we have control over laws that are made to govern us if we elect the legislators who make them, rather than having to fight them through the courts.  The idea of what is or is not constitutional these days has faded, partly because what we require our students to learn about it in school is not enough.  Civics and American History need major overhaul, and need to be put back into the curriculum at every level.  It's a topic for another complete discussion, but instead of taking time back from other subjects, we need to consider lengthening the school day to European standards to make this happen.  We've put our democracy in danger, partly because our schools have failed to teach this.  

Expecting Democrats in Texas, Florida and Other Red States to Resist Means We Need to Help

The problem in Florida and Texas is that Democrats are depending on too few candidates to get statewide turnout.  The analysis of the votes in the 2022 midterms, in both states, show a similar, frustrating pattern among Democratic voters, and that is simply not turning out, even in the kind of numbers they now hold in voter registration in both states.  Val Demings was a top-tier candidate and I can't help but imagine how much different things would have been in Florida if she had been paired on the ballot with a candidate for governor who had similar charisma and ability to turn out voters.  

Likewise, no Texas Democrat has done for the party what Beto O'Rourke has achieved in two statewide elections.  But he was more or less alone at the top of the ticket, in terms of both charisma and name recognition.  Turnout among the Democratic party constituencies in Florida was well below even mid-term thresholds.  It was good in the strong Democratic counties in Texas, compared to the past, but the fact of the matter is that the minority constituencies of Democrats, especially Latinos, are not registering to vote in numbers that represent their percentage of the population.  In Texas, 40% of the population is Latino, and 40% is white, the difference being just one tenth of a percent between them.  But whites have a voter registration 16% higher than Latinos, and a turnout rate that is an additional 5% higher.  All of that has to change.  

As an Illinois Democrat, I chose, this time around, to give my meager political contributions to places where I thought it would do more good than here.  I deeply appreciate the job my Senator, Tammy Duckworth, has done, and I'm thrilled with Governor Pritzker's achievements and all that he has done.  But it was pretty clear, early on, that neither of them would be challenged in their re-election bids.  So I sent direct contributions to Tim Ryan, Cheri Beasley, John Fetterman and Katie Hobbs, and my regular monthly gift goes to the DNC's Congressional election fund.  That's an individual decision, but I think our party needs to think just a little but more out of the box about how it finances campaigns.  

We are Americans and even if our state isn't becoming fascist, we are all affected by this.  It must change, and we must be the ones who change it.