I haven't been around very much of late. The Daily Kos community helped me a great deal as I dealt with my fiancee's illness and death earlier this year, but since then, I'd let myself disconnect a bit.
The events of the two days seemed a good reason to reconnect, and to do so with the primary purpose of this site: politics. I don't live in Texas anymore, but I grew up there. Yesterday, even while the Supreme Court was rolling back the clock on the VRA, we saw what happens when politics and heroism intersect.
Below the squiggly thingy, I want to provide a short introduction to several of those heroes, and comment on what lesson we all need to take home from what we've seen over the last two days.
Wendy Davis (District 10) [Fort Worth], elected 2009
We all saw Wendy Davis stand for over 13 hours. In doing so, we recognized her as a hero, but she has been a hero and a role model long before she took the floor yesterday. She was not born to a political family. In fact, she was raised by her mother in a single-parent household, and took her first job at the age of 14 to assist their financial situation. She became a single parent herself at 19. But she rose above the difficulties of her upbringing, enrolling at the local county college, then transferring to TCU, and then to Harvard Law, where she earned her law degree. She is the first of her family to graduate from college.
Her political career started with a seat on the Fort Worth city council before being elected to the State Senate. Along the way, she has focused on transportation, open government, education, and civil rights.
Until Davis's election, District 10 had been a Republican district since 1981, when then-Senator Bill Meier switched parties. As a token of historical irony, Meier remains the record-holder for the longest filibuster in a legislative body worldwide, having spoken for 43 hours in 1977 to block a worker's compensation bill as being "anti-business". Somehow, I don't suspect those 43 hours of comments were similarly scrutinized for germaneness...
Leticia Van de Putte (District 26) [San Antonio], elected 1999
"Mr. President, at what point does a female senator have to raise her voice or her hand to be heard over her male colleagues in the room?"
Prior to entering politics, Leticia Van de Putte was -- and still is -- a pharmacist, beginning with work at her grandfather's pharmacy before moving on to work in local hospitals and mental health clinics. She entered politics with election to the state House in 1990, moving to the Senate in a 1999 special election. She is an active and outspoken member in a huge array of political organizations. She was one of the Texas Eleven who left the state in 2003 in an effort to deny a quorum for Republican redistricting legislation. Her family life is also important; she has six children and six grandchildren. Her appearance at yesterday's filibuster was especially poignant in that sense because before her arrival on the Senate floor, she had been attending her father's funeral.
Kirk Watson (District 14) [Austin], elected 2007
Those who watched the livestream of the filibuster, especially near the end, recognized Kirk Watson for his slow, deliberate speech with a distinctive drawl. He took a somewhat traditional path into politics, attending Baylor University, and then Baylor Law School, serving as editor-in-chief of the law review, and taking a position as an appeals court clerk. He served on the state bar and co-founded a private law firm. In 1991, Ann Richards appointed him to chair the Texas Air Control Board, beginning his career in politics. He would then also chair his county's Democratic Party, and, in 1997, was elected mayor of Austin -- one of the most popular and successful mayors in the city's history.
District 14, based in the heart of the capital, has been a Democratic base for ages. One former holder of this seat, Lloyd Doggett, is famous in part for his participation in the "Killer Bees" quorum-busting strategy that in 1979 prevented Republicans from moving the presidential primary to benefit former governor John Connally.
And all of us
Davis, Van de Putte, and Watson aren't the only heroes from the Texas Senate yesterday. I could just as easily have written about Judith Zaffirini, or Royce West, or John Whitmire, or the other four opponents of SB5 on the Texas Senate floor. Or any of the hundreds of average citizens screaming from the gallery.
But what's maybe more important is realizing that these biographies could be anyone's. We saw 10 people who, even if they couldn't change things for the better, stopped things from getting worse. And in those people, there is something of each of us. When you look at yourself, maybe you don't see a career attorney and political appointee. But maybe you see someone who entered the real world through their family business. Or maybe a second-generation single parent who has had to fight to pull yourself and your family up.
Every one of these three people came from a different background, took a different path through life, and got into politics in a different way. What they have in common is that they did something, and now, that something made a difference.
Maybe you live in a red district in a red state. I know I do. And so did Wendy Davis. The incumbent she defeated to take office was the only incumbent Texas Senator defeated in the 2008 elections. Republican Kim Brimer had won that seat approximately 59-40 in 2004 and 2002. I don't even think Kos considers races with those odds to be pickup chances, but sometimes they are. Sometimes, any of them are. And even if where you live doesn't stand a chance of putting a Democrat in the US Congress or your state's Congress, there are city councils and school boards. The Republicans got to where they are because they spent 30 years building their way up from local offices that no one cared about until they seized the national scene.
We can do that, too.
Now, sure, we're not all the sorts of people who would make winning candidates for any office, or who want to be candidates for any office, but I don't think there's anywhere in the country that doesn't have a local branch of the Democratic Party. Volunteer. Speak up. If the local party line is that the outlook is hopeless, speak up louder and make there be a new outlook.
Elections happen. Things change. Today was a good day, because DOMA fell. But yesterday we saw what we are fighting against. People like Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte and Kirk Watson and all those screaming citizens in the Senate gallery drew a line in Texas that, for now, is holding. The VRA didn't hold; that part of the slow arc of history will have to be rebuilt.
We saw heroes last night. Instead of watching and waiting for that slow arc of history to bend toward justice, we can do something. We can grab onto it and pull. We can be heroes tomorrow. Life is too short to do otherwise.