Hi John,
I’ve spent the early hours of this Martin Luther King Jr. Day thinking about the work ahead of us. Today is a national day of service, and particularly as a white woman, I am reflecting on the ways in which I must step up to dismantle white supremacy.
Dr. King, and all Black activists of the Civil Rights era, struggled and sacrificed for the important gains our country has achieved.
But we still have a long way to go in dismantling white supremacy. Here in Delaware, anti-Black racism continues to permeate every aspect of our daily lives.
Our neighborhoods are highly segregated, in part due to racist redlining practices. And yet, our senators have voted to roll back the key components of Dodd-Frank that would prohibit redlining.
Our majority-Black neighborhoods are suffering from disproportionately high cancer rates. Meanwhile, our senators are willing to to ease EPA regulations for the corporations polluting our land, air, and water.
Our state’s Black maternal health outcomes are shockingly worse than outcomes for white women. But our senators refuse to acknowledge that healthcare is a human right for ALL people.
And the majority of folks incarcerated in Delaware are Black. Yet our senators refuse to support legislation that would provide comprehensive police reform and accountability, abolish cash bail, end mandatory minimums, and restore the right to vote to every citizen.
This country was built with labor stolen from Black people, and they have never been compensated for it. They have never been repaid for the ways that we have dehumanized them, and the methods through which we continue to exploit them for our economic gain.
Universal social programs are important, but they are insufficient in the fight against racism. As senator, I will fight for reparations for Black Americans, racial equity in funding for addressing environmental degradation, and allocating federal funding to mend the huge racial disparities in health outcomes in our country.
Dr. King was committed to fighting oppression at the intersection of racism and capitalism. Let us follow his example today, and every day, to fight white supremacy and support redistributive policies that center the needs of Black communities.
- Jess
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." - Dr. King