Some of you will remember this headline as the title of a book written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the aftermath of the Montgomery boycott and March on Washington. The impetus for writing the book was the now-renowned “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which he wrote after being arrested for demonstrating on April 16, 1963, and thrown into solitary confinement. It is reported that he wrote the lengthy letter on scraps of newspaper and toilet paper in response to eight white clergymen who had written to him, criticizing him and urging him to abandon the demonstrations and address his grievances through the courts. The letter became the subject of the book he published in 1964.
I reached for this book again after several of my colleagues conveyed to me their anger, despair, and perceived helplessness and hopelessness in the wake of recent events that seem to further erode democracy, particularly the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which might have been the death knell for the Voting Rights Act. That decision all but eviscerated guardrails against race-based gerrymandering.
The Court had ruled in City of Mobile v. Bolden in 1980 that plaintiffs challenging an electoral map had to prove intentional discrimination, a high legal hurdle. Congress responded by overwhelmingly passing the 1982 Voting Rights Act Amendments, lowering the bar by requiring plaintiffs to prove only that the map had the effect of diluting votes, not that the legislature intended to dilute votes racially. This guardrail was formalized in the landmark 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, allowing courts to mandate the creation of majority-minority districts based solely on a map’s real-world discriminatory effects. This was during the Reagan years.
The Callais ruling opens the door for race-based representational dilution and declares that creating minority districts is unconstitutional. States began rushing to carve up districts with black Congressmembers, redistributing black voters into majority-white districts, alleging that the gerrymander was motivated by party affiliation and not race. It is expected that black Americans will lose significant representation in Congress, and even more so on local levels, if more counties adopt at-large voting.
The Supreme Court further demonstrated its political leanings when it let stand a ruling by the Virginia State Supreme Court striking down a Democratic gerrymandered map on a technical voting-rules issue that would have allowed the party to pick up four additional seats, despite voters having approved the new map in a referendum. The jury’s still out about the impact these new districts will have on the outcome of November’s midterm elections. I will be satisfied if Democrats win by just a handful of seats. A blue wave would be wonderful, but a slight majority would give Democrats control of committees, slam the brakes on Trump’s rampant corruption, and hold the administration accountable.
Now is the time for social workers to begin strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing to push our agenda. We should have bills in the pipeline, introduced, attracting cosponsors, and organizational support, and ready for deliberation before the elections. We should not be in a wait-and-see-if-the-House-flips state of mind. It’s encouraging to see so many schools of social work and organizations convening discussions about greater engagement.
There is much work to be done, and the time to start is now. When I went on the Hill to work with Congressman Ed Towns, there were about a dozen social workers who were members of Congress. That number has dwindled to two—Reps. Sylvia Garcia (TX-29) and Hillary Scholten (MI-03). We grew the newly-formed Congressional Social Work Caucus to more than 70 members; we’re lucky if we have half that many today. We need more social workers on the Hill and in legislative settings at all levels. Our research and policy preferences do not get into legislative deliberations without aggressive strategic advocacy. We have an idea about how we can do this. We are hoping to launch a Congressional Fellows program in the near future.
We cannot let the current crisis be an excuse for paralysis. I can only imagine the despair and frustration Dr. King experienced nightly in solitary confinement. He never lost the faith that better days would come if he and his committed colleagues made positive steps. The blunt lesson is this: democracy is not protected by admiration for democratic ideals. It is protected by people willing to act before the window closes. Dr. King’s warning was about the danger of waiting for something to happen. For social workers today, the question is not whether the threats are real. They are. The question is whether the profession will respond as spectators of decline or as organized agents of democratic renewal. What’s on your agenda?