GEORGIA OUT OF ITS MIND
Georgia Republicans have provided Democrats with the perfect opening to expose the idiotic perfidy of their voter suppression laws: the provision criminalizing the offering of food and water to those standing in line to vote. Reportedly Florida is considering a similar law; and since Georgia is seen by other Republican legislatures as a model, other states may follow suit. I can only hope they do.
What an ideal opportunity for the law’s opponents to practice civil disobedience. Imagine scores of Democrats descending on lines of voters offering food and drink being hauled away en masse, later to appear by the thousands before beleaguered judges for the “crime” of offering their fellow citizens food and water while waiting in lines made long by Republican limitations of the numbers of polling places. The withering ridicule by the press would be devastating. Further imagine the protests at county courthouses if judges upheld the law by handing out sentences for such humane acts of kindness. More withering press coverage.
Such a scenario brings to mind Gandhi’s “Salt March” to the sea to make salt from their own waters to evade the British tax on salt. Gandhi’s purpose was “no less than to convert the British people through nonviolence and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India.” By peaceful defiance of the law, Democrats should similarly reap a bountiful harvest of converts among independents and moderate Republicans.