The 2022 Election Will Be Won ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’

By Colleen O’Connor

The leaked draft of the U.S. Supreme Court’s tentative decision to overturn Roe v. Wade may have just doomed the GOP and uplifted the Democrats.

At its base, the Justice Alito decision is not just an assault on the “rule of law,” the sanctity of legal precedence, and the appearance (if never the reality) of an unbiased Court bench, but it has now eclipsed the news coverage of the brutal Ukraine war; the omnipresence of Donald Trump-isms; and to what end?

The legal, cultural, economic, race and gender-biased ghosts—still lingering from the 1860s U.S. Civil War—are rising from their graves—to fight again.

Watch as these Civil War brawls play out in present day 2022 and beyond.

Why?  Because the country has yet to solve the inequities in the original Constitution.  Starting with Blacks, women, and “states rights” v. “federalism.”

Again, why? Because the U.S. Constitution was written by and for white men of property.  Not women, not slaves, not immigrants, not 18 year-olds, and certainly not in any way protective of “personal liberties” or rights for everyone.

Remember, the original constitution counted slaves as “3/5 a human being” for purposes of taxation and representation.  Votes were allowed only for white men.

Slave cabins were frequented by white male slave owners and overseers; often with their wives knowing consent (as pregnancy was too perilous).  No consequences for rapists, no help with pregnancies (save iffy potions); no laws to protect these women of color; nor their enslaved mates.

Call it the American genetic sequencing code now threatening “democracy” again.

Or as comedian, Stephen Colbert, so aptly phrased his response to the “undemocratic” nature of the current Court bench:

“Congratulations, ladies, your decisions are being made by four dudes and a woman who thinks ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a rom-com.”

How did anything improve in the last two centuries?  With violence.  Protests.  Marches.  Hangings.  Murders.  And “Shoulder to Shoulder” elections, reminiscent to the Women’s Suffragettes push for their right to vote.

The white man’s Constitution; written to preserve the 18th century status quo of patriarchy, has changed, but the resistance continues — even to “settled law and precedence”—with the new Alito ruling abolishing the 50-year right of women to control their own bodies.

This, too, will produce violence, but now those originally absent at the first document signing are about to come together in a possibly seismic new “Shoulder to Shoulder” movement–the designated mantra of the women’s suffragette movement in the early 20th century and before.

Stick together, arm in arm, and shoulder to shoulder.  Do not break ranks.  Keep marching.

Think about it.  Do the math.  And imagine the results.

Women are now 50.8% of the population and have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980.

Furthermore, Black women turn out in extremely higher numbers.

“In key swing states where Black women turned out, in urban areas, in places like Georgia…[they were] critical to the Biden victory. And, particularly in recent elections, Black women have one of the highest turnout rates.”

“Nonwhite people accounted for about one-third of the electorate in 2020, which is the largest share ever.”

Harken back to the spontaneous #MeToo crowds; the Civil Rights marches; the anti-war protestors; the 70s women’s movement; the LGBTQ campaigns; and the counter, visceral pushback from the January 6th rioters at the Capitol.

It is the new Civil War, predicted and condemned in 1881 by Suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage, who wrote “The law of motherhood should be entirely under woman’s control.”

“To choose when and how often she chooses to go down into the valley of the shadow of death, to give the world another child, should be hers alone go say.”

The majority of Americans agree, but not the 5-members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

For them, “the Constitution is what they say it is.”  And has been for centuries.

Five people v. Democracy.  How fair is that?