The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol threatened U.S. democracy. Individuals unhappy with the voters’ choice of Joe Biden as president used violence to try to prevent Congress from completing the electoral vote count and certifying the election results.
Now, similar Constitution-ignoring, citizen-enforced actions are being incited through law at the state and local level. This is creating serious new threats to our democracy, but also new openings for collaborative action by movements usually focused on single issues.
In recent weeks, three dangerous bills were signed into law in Texas: HB 1927 permits people to carry handguns without a permit; SB 8 bans abortion after six weeks; and SB 1 criminalizes multiple efforts to expand access to voting.
Together, these three bills represent dramatic incursions on the basic rights to vote, bodily integrity, and public safety. They also reveal a shared underlying strategy on the right of encouraging vigilantism and subverting the rule of law, two key features of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
What unites all three is the strategic shift away from respecting government oversight and its responsibility to protect citizens’ rights, to the promotion of using self-appointed private citizens to enforce political goals that have been repudiated by U.S. voters.
SB 1 permits partisan poll watchers to freely move — and intimidate — within polling places. SB 8 allows anyone to sue any person who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks by advising, counseling, giving a ride — the imagined list goes on. And HB 1927 permits these self-appointed enforcers to carry concealed guns, potentially increasing the risk to anyone who questions or resists their interventions.
While these three laws represent potent threats to our democracy, they also provide a promising opening for common action by three movements that have been working long and hard to pursue their separate goals.
The movement to reduce gun violence has promoted laws that reduce access to guns for those with a history of violence, limit the political power of the gun lobby and firearms industry and backed the gun safety and gun registration laws that the majority of U.S. voters support.
The abortion and reproductive justice movement has defended equitable access to health care, a pregnant person’s right to self-determination and the idea that policies should be grounded in science.
And the voter protection movement has worked to repeal restrictive rules that deter voters, end voter intimidation and suppression, and make it easier for all Americans to vote.
In contrast to the spirit behind the three passed Texas bills, the gun control, reproductive justice and voter protection movements share a commitment to majority rule and to protecting human and democratic rights. Their proponents are determined to hold accountable those public officials who violate these basic rights.
Groups that work nationally and with local activists, such as Movement Voter, Way to Win, Voting Rights Lab, Raising Women’s Voices, Physicians for Reproductive Health, Trust Women, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, Giffords and many others are leading the way in their respective issue areas, and they could draft local legislation together, support candidates and pressure corporations not to do business in the state and organize in tandem.
By acting in concert to illuminate the profoundly anti-democratic nature of these three measures in Texas and similar ones elsewhere, these movements can play a leading role in mobilizing opposition to this intimidation.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Dr. Wendy Chavkin is professor emerita of Population and Family Health and Obstetrics-Gynecology at Columbia University. She is a co-founder of Global Doctors for Choice. This column was produced for The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.
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