It Is Time For Offense
This week, Virginia voters sent a clear message that they're not interested in the Trumpification of the landscape. The result is that Democrats now have control of both houses of the legislature, and the governorship. What now stands in the way of making the lives of many millions of Virginians quantifiably better is greed and political orthodoxy. This is an opportunity, in many ways. It's an opportunity to start forcing Democrats to make the decision that compromising with the electorate that chose Corey Stewart as their nominee for US is not the kind of compromise that's needed, but that compromising with all of the people the likes of Corey Stewart and his supporters have targeted throughout the entirety of Virginia's history is in their best interest.
We (and by we, I mean all of us who never got access or representation in the kinds of deal making which resulted in those compromises) now have the responsibility to make sure the Democrats get to work, now. Not next month. Not "after we have a more stable majority." Now.
The chances that Democrats are going to be able to hold both houses of the legislature, and the governorship in another election are extremely slim, unless they get to work passing legislation and leading on the things that are a benefit to people's lives.
This means there is a finite amount of time before there are systematic and ideological hurdles which will be essentially insurmountable. When the Republicans take back some part of Virginia government, and VA hasn't shown itself to be so blue as to not assume this will be the case, it means entire communities and populations will have to shift their strategy from making gains, to making it cost the Republican Party to openly target them. Right now, it's time to play offense.
One of the first things the legislature can do is to address some of the problems of many working people in Virginia.
Ratify the ERA, and along with it, insure state government contracts are tied to companies being willing to demonstrate they don't just rhetorically support things like equal pay, maternity and paternity leave, but that they institute them. State and local governments across the country, along with the federal government have instituted rules about diversity related to contractors. It's the kind of move which can have positive effects on A LOT of people, especially in a state which is as dependent on federal dollars as Virginia is. State government contracts are not a "right." If businesses don't want to treat Virginians with the basic modicum of respect we deserve, the state shouldn't be rewarding them contracts, plain and simple.
In keeping with this, protections for the LGBTQ community need to be put in place. No one should lose their jobs or their housing because they are LBGTQ. It's a very real fear many Virginians live wth, and it doesn't take an act of Congress to change it. It is also in no way controversial with the actual electorate. A majority of the country does not believe people should be fired or lose their housing because they are LGBTQ. There is a very loud minority, and they aren't going to be less quiet three years, five years or ten years from now. There is no reason to wait.
Most importantly for all workers in Virginia, it's time to end "Right To Work" rules. It's unconscionable that we're nearly into 2020 and working Virginians can still be fired from their jobs with basically no protections. It's absurd. That the majority of Virginia's workers can be terminated at the will of their employers without having to provide anything significant in the way of proof of cause is an insult.
The next thing the Democratic majority should fully embrace is something akin to "Truth and Reconciliation." Virginia's place in the system of racial segregation and degradation that has been US history is unique. We love to lean on some representation of our history as the seat of American democracy and the like, but we have very purposefully avoided and ignored that it was exactly that same seat of American democracy that established the very first laws dedicated to racial supremacy. We went on to be the seat of a rebellion in service of that racial supremacy. After that rebellion was put down, we fought to dismantle the prosperity and access to power that had been granted to Black Americans during Reconstruction. We fought to preserve segregation in the 1960's and were the origin of the term "Massive Resistance" where desegregation was concerned.
Virginia is in the most logical position to lead the way for the rest of the nation to begin to address the historical and present realities of the results those first laws instituted to support racial supremacy have wrought. If Virginia can do this, there is no reason that any other state in the nation wouldn't be able to. Otherwise, we can just accept that the choices we've made to not address that history directly and attempt to find a way to make right the wrongs which have been done. If we do so, we're telling all of the far right and white supremacists groups in the nation we are sympathetic to their cause. They will continue to see Virginia as a key battleground in their efforts to assert an even more stringent system of racial supremacy. If the Democratic Party of Virginia wants to continue to present itself as the organization of "adults in the room," they need to do the adult thing and use the power given them responsibly, and make no mistake, no matter how hard it may seem, no matter how politically fraught it may seem, it's the adult thing to do, it's the right thing to do and it's the thing which will provide Virginia with the most stable future.
Then there's the issue of public schools in Virginia. This isn't just a conversation about school boards, administrations and funding education. What many Virginia schools are facing is a population of students for whom it is almost cruel to suggest they just fit themselves into the traditional classroom environment. Unlike what most conservative pundits and idiocrats would have us believe, this is not just a problem of the inner city. Rural Virginia is experiencing new levels of poverty, along with the problems of hopelessness that accompany it. We could pull off an absolute miracle and get the recognized best in administrators, teachers and staff, and a lot of VA schools would still not be "performing" up to the standard. Schools need students who are capable of learning, and in a lot of places in Virginia, those students are facing hurdles outside the classroom which are making it all but impossible for them to succeed in the classroom.
Those problems, ripple through our cities and towns, contributing to or exponentially exacerbating yet other issues. One of the most effective things we can do for our schools, as well as every other sector of society, is to start taking a pro-active stance on dealing with the trauma people are subjected to that results from poverty, every form of violence, and generalized neglect. We need to start having some kind of response to provide families and individuals the support they need to overcome these experiences. We can produce a statewide network of care providers who are capable of helping individuals and families determine what their needs are and helping them to make sure they have access to whatever resources they need. It's not impossible, and it's less expensive than continuing to pay for jails, law enforcement, medical care, mental health care, and many other associated costs we're incurring from our failure to start addressing these trauma's on the front end, instead of the back end. It's clear in all of the available research that jails and prisons are the largest providers of mental health treatment in the country, and the majority of people in jails have been effected by some kind of trauma, even if we do them the unfortunate disservice of discounting jail or prison itself as an experience which produces trauma.
One of the ways to do this is to institute a practice of sending trauma teams to any call for public services that involves violence, neglect, mental health emergencies, overdoes etc. Having these teams on the scene to determine who is likely to deal with the effects of trauma, and make sure they have the option to begin seeking treatment, before it starts to effect their ability to carry out their daily lives, as opposed to having to stabilize them when they've reached a point of crisis, is a win win for everyone that person comes into contact with or who has a relationship with them. Their families, friends, employers, everyone. For the individual, it means not having to wonder whether or not they're "being weak" or even wonder what exactly is wrong. They can be provided with information on what the symptoms are, so that they have at their disposal the information to make the decision to contact someone who can help them start assessing what their needs are, immediately, not after they've lost housing or lost a job or important relationships, which then only compound the stress and exacerbate the symptoms they experience from the initial trauma. If we are sending people on these calls whose only job is to identify people who have been subject to an experience which can create trauma that effects their ability to live their daily lives, as they see fit, we are going to start being able to treat the kids who are in our schools and need us to provide them with the kind of care necessary for their stability to be sound enough for them to learn. They are going to be experiencing more stable homes, families, extended relations and communities, and themselves being exposed to fewer instances of experiences which create trauma.
Virginia can take the lead in showing the rest of the nation how to address a myriad of problems, by simply taking into account the very real fact that schools do not exist in a vacuum. In many parts of the country and in many parts of Virginia (certainly in Richmond), what we're expecting of children is for them to essentially be supra-human. The research is clear, and it is becoming mountainous where the results of trauma are concerned. We're not going to be able to give children stable environments if we don't also treat the adults in their environments with the respect that says they deserve our support when dealing with or attempting to heal from trauma. We have conclusively proven trauma has negative effects on development, and the sooner we can intervene, the fewer adults we're going to have who are still struggling with trauma they encountered in childhood.
Let's be crystal clear about this, the effects of childhood trauma are not about people being unwilling to let the past go. Childhood trauma effects the neural pathways and neural transmitters in the brain itself. It changes the way a child's brain develops. Many people who experience childhood trauma try very, very hard to just put the past behind them and move forward. They may not think of the traumatic experience itself for years at a time. Many of the people among them are going to experience symptoms related to that trauma whether or not they are thinking about with any regularity. To them, they have put it behind them, but they are then dealing with the symptoms without understanding their origin, which often results in unhealthy coping mechanisms. Here in Richmond, where I live, this is an epidemic. There is little reason to believe the other cities and rural areas of Virginia aren't facing similar obstacles.
Of course, the first question is going to be how do we pay for these things, and the answer is relatively simple. We make Dominion and the many multi-billion dollar defense contractors in Virginia pay their fare share. The push on the politicians should be that if they are willing to make profoundly positive changes in people's lives the focus of what they're work is, they won't need campaign donations from deep pocketed donors, because the people whose lives they do positively effect will do the campaigning for them. Reaching the large portion of non-voters Virginia has isn't just about "outreach." It's about giving people a reason to believe there's something worth fighting for, and the horrid truth is that for the majority of the non-voting public, the feeling that there is nothing in "politics" for them is one founded on hard experience. They've watched administration after administration, legislature after legislature come through as their lives have continued to be consumed by the results of a political system held hostage by it's reliance on wealthy donors who are in no position to effectively imagine the solutions to the problems the least privileged of us face.
The path toward a stable future for Virginia is in our ability to do everything we can to give people the opportunity to provide stability and fulfillment for themselves. Giving them the resources they need to reach a place in their lives where they can genuinely have access to and be able to take advantage of options. The VA legislature, and the Democratic Party that now has control of it, have the opportunity to this. Whether or not they decide to do so will determine the ability of Virginia to weather the instability the nation is guaranteed to face in the next few years.