What is breaking us?

It is our insistence on civility that fractures our nation, not our desire to speak truthfully.

It is the extralegal killing of Black men by police that fractures our nation, not the protests in response.

It is our insistence on funding our schools through property taxes that fractures our nation, not teaching the true history of slavery.

It is the withholding of healthcare from people that fractures our nation, not civil disobedience to demand it.

It is the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few that fractures our nation, not the insistence that all of us deserve a fair minimum wage. .

It is making voting more difficult that fractures our nation, not the elimination of Senate rules.

If your child is sick, you don’t make them ask nicely to go to the doctor. If your neighbor’s child is crying from hunger, you don’t make them stop crying before you give them food. If you come upon a car accident and someone is injured, you simply call the ambulance. When your grandmother suffers an injury, you choose to help her. When your brother is having a hard time, you choose to support him. And when you need and deserve something, I hope you have family, friends, and neighbors who provide it for you.

You and your neighbors deserve to make enough money to put food on the table for your families. You and your neighbors deserve healthcare so that you can stay healthy. You and your neighbors deserve quality schools for your kids. And you and your neighbors deserve access to vote.

Our government should have policies that provide us all what we need and deserve. It is our representatives’ job to enact laws that provide those things. And if we need to speak truth, protest, and eliminate Senate rules to get them, then so be it. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who didn’t let civility get in the way of what his people deserved. We must honor him by insisting on our own rights. Don’t fall prey to false equivalencies: it is not our response to injustice that fractures our nation, but injustice itself.

No celebration without legislation today. We need our Senators to eliminate the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.