This 2024 Election Day, Let’s Advance the Struggle for Representation!
(As published on Medium, circa October 2024)
This 2024 Election Day, Let’s Advance the Struggle for Representation!
By Michael Alan Dover
A recent discussion in the well-respected The Conversation pointed out that women remain woefully under-represented in local government. Women also remain under-represented in Congress and in governorships, and of course have not yet broken the proverbial glass ceiling to the Presidency.
Barack Obama, an African American man, has served as president, and other Black men have served as Governors, including current Maryland Governor Wes Moore. But African American women remain particularly under-represented in US politics. As well, no woman and no descendant of survivors of American slavery has served as president or vice-president.
Nor has either major party nominated Puerto Rican, Mexican American, Native American or LGBTQ+ candidates for the presidency or vice-presidency. The nomination of Kamala Harris for President presents an opportunity to make yet another important advance in what is known as the struggle for representation, defined in a below section.
In 2000, when Jewish Senator Joe Lieberman became the first Jew nominated for vice-president, there was a huge ovation. Here is a link to the audio of the moving benediction by the late Reverend Billy Kyles of Memphis, Tennessee, who was Pastor of the Monumental Baptist Church and a witness to the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The message resounds today: “Our hearts are restless, but grateful, weary, but determined, and so we pause this night in this place, at this time, in the affairs of men, to come to the altar of prayer, as did our fore powers long ago. They prayed through the horrors of the Middle Passage, through the haunting years of slavery and apartheid. They prayed through this nation's Civil War where brother fought against brother. They prayed through the horrendous atrocities of the Holocaust.”
He went on: “Eternal God, as we gather here, the beneficiaries of all thy blessings, lift us out of our indifference and complacency to meet the needs of the poor, the oppressed, the dying and the dispossessed people of the world…..Guide us through these perilous times when men would have us believe that in is out, up is down, right is wrong, truth is a liar, light is dark, and war is peace.”
Prior to his final prayer, he said, “We are thankful that you reached way down to protect us from the forces that sought to destroy us, and we know that you have not brought us this far to leave us now.”
The outpouring of support which African American, Jewish, and other delegates gave to Lieberman being on the ticket was in my view due to excitement that this was just the first step, and that an African American would soon be on the national ticket, a step taken in 2008. At that 2008 convention, a white evangelical pastor gave the closing benediction, saying, “Let’s go change the world for good.” For the closing benedictions at the 2024 DNC, Vice-President Harris chose Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt and Reverend Amos Brown.
The election of Kamala Harris as President would be another momentous step in the struggle for representation. Her election would shatter the glass ceiling that has kept women out of the White House, other than as first ladies. And, significantly, Doug Emhoff would be the first male and Jewish first gentleman.
Harris’ election would reflect the continued growth of Black/Jewish unity and left/center unity. Her election will also reflect notable support for Harris from many compassionate conservatives. After all, Vice-President Harris is running as one of the most qualified candidates for president of any party in many decades.
What is the struggle for representation?
The struggle for representation is a conceptual phrase which best describes the result of a consensus decision by thousands of activists, North and South, in civil rights, labor and other progressive movements of the late 1950s and early 1960s. These activists decided to work pragmatically in their political and electoral work to support key progressive legislative reforms and to elect women, African Americans, and other historically excluded candidates to public office. As I learned as a young activist myself in the later 1960s, they called this the struggle for representation.
The fullest written formulation of the struggle for representation—one which focuses primarily on that part of the struggle which involves electing woman as change agents—was Bella Abzug and Cynthia Edgar’s, “Women and politics: The struggle for representation,” in The Massachusetts Review in Spring 1972.
The article began, “For most of this country's history, women's place has been in the home, in the fields, in the factories, in the sweatshops, or any place except where the power is. Women have been excluded from the decision-making levels of political parties, and from all levels of government in American society” (Abzug & Edgar, 1972, p. 17), and ended, “The real silent majority is about to vocalize” (p. 24).
Their article said that the goal was “to elect a diversity of women: Black, white, Indian, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian; welfare mothers; union women, factory workers, farm workers, secretaries, teachers, artists, doctors, scientists, housewives, lawyers, businesswomen; young, old, middle aged; poor, working poor, middle-class. Such a Congress would be more truly representative.”
The goal was not just to elect women to office but to “deal with the complex problems which beset our society,” including discrimination “against women, the poor, the young, and any underrepresented minority.”
This tactical and strategic decision involved electing African American mayors of big cities in Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans. Elsewhere there were also notable efforts to elect more women and racial minority candidates to Congress.
What does it mean to work pragmatically?
When I say they made a decision to work pragmatically, what do I mean? Given how strongly Vice-President Harris has stressed her problem-solving approach to the issues of the day—one which Senator Bernie Sanders has referred to as pragmatist in nature—I think this bears further explanation. For instance, at the CNN Town Hall, Harris said: “I believe in fixing problems. I love fixing problems,” Harris said. “And so, I pledge to you to be a president who not only works for all Americans, but works on getting stuff done, and that means compromise.”
In 2019, I addressed the question of progressive pragmatism in my Needs-Based Partial Theory of Human Injustice in Humanity & Society. Later, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer—just after the 2020 election—I said it was time to talk turkey about pragmatic ways to address our common human need: “But pragmatism devoid of attention to human needs and human rights will fail to address the anger about racism and social injustice which sprang forward this year.”
Now is the time to double down on recognizing the significance of this struggle for representation. Electing Kamala Harris as President would put the first woman and Indian American in the White House. President Harris would be the second biracial president and the first president in a Christian/Jewish interreligious marriage. These would be significant advances for our democracy and would constitute a truly historic victory in what will still need to be an ongoing struggle for representation.
Every presidential election is of immense importance. But this is one presidential election where our children, grandchildren and other relatives will surely ask us: Did you vote and work and donate to support Kamala Harris? Here in Ohio, votes for Harris for President and Brown for the Senate are vote for bold measures that could be transformational in nature.
It is easy to lose hope that merely electing candidates will result in any real significant change in our lives. But let us try to imagine. Imagine if nearly every state, at the urging of our next President, replicated Maryland Governor Moore’s 2024 Executive Order, which pardoned 175,000 Marylanders who had convictions for misdemeanor possession of cannabis and related paraphernalia.
Imagine what it would mean to cut child poverty in half by bringing back the pandemic-years version of the Child Tax credit, originally proposed by Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. Imagine if we could pass the Equal Rights Amendment and pass the Equality Act and the pro-labor ProAct. Imagine if we could finally pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform, at the very least along the lines of the so-called McCain Bill, which passed the Senate in 2013 under President Obama.
Such legislative initiatives would be ways to extend the earlier victories of the civil rights movement. Together, they would further advance efforts to dismantle how institutional racism functions, namely what Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones called inaction in the face of need. In other words, they would be steps toward pragmatic ways to address our common human needs. In my view, a pragmatic principle I have coined—minimum necessary social intervention—is the conceptual key to the political and moral viability of political pragmatism.
As I have argued elsewhere in more depth, we need to use class, organizational and institutional analysis within each policy domain to ascertain what is the best mix of sectors to fund and to deliver the necessary services and benefits required to address human needs, consistently with human rights. We need to use human rationality and caring while we engage in nonviolent and fully constitutional political struggles to defeat human injustice. What are the implications of such an assertion at this very crucial time?
Much has been said about seeing this election as essential to saving our democracy from increasingly authoritarian trends in US politics. That was also one key motivation for those who commenced the struggle for representation in the wake of the reactionary McCarthy period in the early 1950s. Over seventy years later, the MAGA movement represents a revival of that very same America First and anti-democratic efforts tendency.
Now more than ever we need to mobilize voters to recognize how truly significant it is for people across the political spectrum to advance the struggle for representation and protect our democracy. Electing Kamala Harris will pave the way for further victories in the struggle for representation. For instance, why not aspire to elect Maryland Governor Wes Moore or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass as President in 2032. I say this not to actually promote such candidacies, but to make the point that we must constantly keep the struggle for representation in mind.
The election of Moore or Bass would mean the election of a President who was a descendant of survivors of the system of slavery in the United States. But they would be just two of many candidates who could represent continued victories in the struggle for representation. That struggle should not be approached mechanically, as if we are checking a box or electing a candidate due only to their intersectional positionalities.
For instance, might current Texas Senatorial candidate Colin Alford be another, or current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, or current Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin? No candidate for office is a perfect person or a perfect candidate. The question we must always ask is who is best positioned to lead us forward in the struggle for the sustainability of humankind and all the inhabitants of this earth of ours.
But now is the time to unite to win another victory in the ongoing struggle for representation, given all it would mean for a reason which Rev. Kyles offered in his 2000 benediction: “to make this world a better place for all the nations of the earth.”
Michael A. Dover, PhD, LISW-S, is a social worker, social work educator and sociologist who resides in Bratenahl and will use this substack for a return to occasional journalistic work including reporting, news analysis, and opinion (all opinions my own).