Celebration and horror – Email on Jan 7, 2021 from Dori Paster

This is a day we should be celebrating. Yesterday, it became clear that we have won both Georgia Senate runoffs (beyond recount territory), making Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff the new Georgia Senators, and putting the US Senate in Democratic control. And Congress affirmed and correctly counted the Electoral College votes, thus ensuring that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as of January 20, will be the next President and Vice-President of the United States. Regardless of disappointment about other elections we hoped to win, this is the result we have been hoping for and working towards – Democratic control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress, in less than two weeks.

But the shock, fear, anger, and sadness of what happened at the Capitol yesterday still pervades. The number of people filled with hatred and seemingly okay with being conned by ludicrous lies and misinformation, Trump encouraging and directing the terrorist mob to advance on the Capitol, the muted responses of the overwhelmed Capitol Police as well as delays in calling in the DC National Guard and MPD (especially compared to other protests), the lack of voting representation of DC residents in what happens in the Capitol (yesterday and everyday), and more. Photos and eye-witness accounts of the domestic terrorists in the Capitol still fill my mind.

There are lots of calls for a second impeachment and for invoking the 25th amendment (removing the president for inability to serve, initiated by the Vice President and Cabinet). Both options seem obviously appropriate (and have for some time), but given timing and the remaining support for 45, neither seems likely (but you never know!). If you’d like to call your Congresspeople in support of that, you can find contact info here. Don’t bother calling people representing other jurisdictions; it’s more effective to get friends in those jurisdictions to call their Congresspeople.

Yesterday was a really crappy day. We’ll reclaim our celebration soon.

One more thing. I try to write no more than one email a week. This seems to be an extraordinary week and I apologize for the multiple emails, and, there will be one more tomorrow (my usual Friday one, focusing on a more normal future). And because we’re having email issues, I’m going to send this to the old googlegroup as well (if you are receiving this here, you can just delete the one to the googlegroup). Please don’t unsubscribe. This is temporary and we’ll be back to our limited email schedule very soon, hopefully by next week.

Dori