Today’s Democrats’ most effective display of moral integrity, political leadership, and savvy communication came on the steps of the Capitol last Sunday (although corporate media failed to give it a fraction of the attention it deserved). House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) began before sunrise, opening with a prayer. They spoke about their experience in the Black church, their deep-seated faith in America, and the connection between the two. By ones and twos over the course of the day, dozens joined them on the steps, and many more stopped to watch and listen.
Faith leaders and progressive activists (e.g., American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten; president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Maya Wiley; and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler) joined Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware (a Yale Divinity School graduate who often speaks on how faith informs his politics), Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Adam Schiff of California, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, and more than a dozen House members from Maryland to Missouri; Florida to California. Some offered prayers; others spoke of their lifelong commitments to their neighborhoods; still others focused on the plight of those dependent on programs like Medicaid and SNAP—lifesaving programs that Trump would (and still might) eviscerate.
“Booker and Jeffries spoke at the beginning of the sit-in, which began around 6 a.m., about their religious upbringings, saying they would usually be attending services on Sunday morning but instead were hosting the conversation on the Capitol steps,” NBC News reported.
Again and again, they addressed the MAGA attack on America as a violation of fundamental religious and moral principles. During the day-long vigil, they spoke about the “redemptive power” of faith and good works, shared stories about their families and struggles, and stressed leaders’ obligation to care for the neediest among us.
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Booker set their tone and intention, declaring:
“Martin Luther King said, ‘Budgets are moral documents,’ and that’s the spirit we come here with this morning.”
He asked others to “give your own testimony to your moral urgency that you feel, to maybe your faith traditions or moral traditions that ... motivate you at this moment to speak out—maybe share your story of what the threat of this bill does to you and your lives.”
Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware delivered stirring remarks that spoke to the “power of prayer, the power of persuasion and the power of the people.” She asked, “What path will we choose to pick? People say, ‘we are better than this.’ No, we are this. Do we want to be better than this?” This sort of tough love and raw and earnest emotion is rare in D.C.
Democrats certainly did not ignore Donald Trump’s constitutional outrages, but their focus was on the cruelty MAGA gleefully inflicts on ordinary people. “Republicans in Congress are proposing cuts that will take food from children, healthcare from the sick, and dignity from those already struggling,” Booker said. “It’s wrong. To stop it, we all must say so—clearly, courageously, and together. Speaking out and speaking up is how we will convince four Republicans in the House and Senate to do the right thing and vote No.” He added, “This [budget] bill, we believe, presents one of the greatest moral threats to our country that we've seen in terms of what it will do to providing food for the hungry, care for the elderly, services for the disabled, health care for the sick.”
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Observing that none of what transpired in the first 100 days was “normal,” Jeffries weighed in: “Republicans are crashing the economy, undermining American values, assaulting our democracy, and driving us toward a recession. Now, they want to jam a reckless budget down the throats of the American people that will end Medicaid as we know it and rip food from the mouths of children, seniors, and veterans. Enough.” Sounding as exasperated as many of us feel, he asked rhetorically: “What kind of people would actually gut Meals on Wheels in service of trying actually to deliver massive tax cuts for their billionaire donors like Elon Musk?!”
If the goal was, as Booker proposed, to “center the stories of people who will be affected by this bill that will cut Medicaid so savagely and so many other things, to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans,” the gathering succeeded. If the aim was to reach hundreds of thousands of Americans on a host of social media platforms, that succeeded as well.
But most of all, Democrats succeeded in reclaiming the language of faith, which resonates with hundreds of millions of people. They read from scripture and multiple works from different religions. They reminded Americans that faith is what you do, not merely what you say. In weaving together stories of family and foes, of trials and tribulations, they took the struggle against Trump out of the abstract, technical, and legalistic pattern omnipresent in D.C. to ground it in their and America’s shared experience and humanity.
Dressed in casual clothes in the bright sunlight, they seemed less like politicians and more like neighbors, fellow congregants, and passionate citizens. There is a place for high-flying rhetoric, booming rhetoric, and sophisticated argument in public life, but if Democrats can remember how to talk to and with regular people, to express empathy in nonpartisan and moral terms, and to demonstrate tenacity in support of Americans, they can recover Americans’ trust. But they will only accomplish that if they can reach connect with ordinarily, apolitical Americans, dampen many people’s cynicism and fatalism, and offer a more humane vision of American governance.
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Today, we salute Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker, and all who joined them for their collective act of undaunted, empathetic leadership. May they keep it up and inspire other Democrats to demonstrate their own acts of courageous devotion.
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