Tag Archives: US Senate

Gun control, Gun violence, March For Our Lives

300 gather in Benicia to protest gun violence and call on congress to DO SOMETHING!

March For Our Lives crowd is inspired by Benicia High School Youth and Community Leaders

Benicia March for Our Lives 2, June 11, 2022. Photos by Constance Beutel (video  below)

By Roger Straw, June 11, 2022

Benicia moms and high school youth organized a local rally and march on Saturday, June 11, to call attention to the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S., and to call for sensible legislation to make our schools – and our communities – safer.

A crowd of around 300 rallied at Benicia’s First Street Green overlooking the Carquinez Strait.  Attendees received free blue t-shirts with white lettering, “MARCH FOR OUR LIVES” and the colorful crowd heard inspiring speeches before taking to the sidewalks and marching up First Street and back to the Green.

Organizer Alicia Brewster served as MC, welcoming the crowd and thanking everyone, including co-organizers Becca Cannon, Jacquie McCue and others.

Leadoff speaker was Terry Scott, chair of Benicia’s Arts and Culture Commission.  Scott shared his experience at Kent State University in 1970 when he witnessed the killing of 4 students and injuring of 9 others. Then he turned to our current epidemic of gun violence, asking, “How high are we willing to set the price to defend an amendment that has been outpaced by technology? How is being shot at schools, malls, churches, grocery stores an expression of freedom? Is it time to agree that the original intent of an antiquated amendment has been co-opted?”

Benicia School Board President Sheri Zada recalled the horrific 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland Florida. That AK-47 massacre triggered the March For Our Lives movement, and Zada was one of the organizers of Benicia’s 2018 March. Zada recalled, “I was with my husband Alan, at lunch one day, crying… and I said, ‘You know what, I can’t just sit by and do nothing.'”  She offered sobering statistics, “More than 170 school shootings have happened since Parkland, Florida.  170!  Over 950 school shootings have happened since Sandy Hook in 2012…. You’ve got to realize that it’s an epidemic in our country. Guns are the leading cause of death in American children and teens.”  Zada got enthusiastic applause as she wondered what can be done, “Well, the first thing I did when I got into office is that I made sure there is a resolution passed in our School Board that would not allow our teachers to be armed, ever.”

Three students representing Benicia High School followed.

“I am here speaking to you today because I am fifteen, and I am tired,” said Bella Cannon, Sophomore Class President of Benicia High School.  Bella’s litany of “I am tired” statements illustrated the sorry state of so many of our kids in schools these days.  “I am tired of being scared to go to school every day. I am tired of being worried about my 10-year-old sister and 13-year-old brother when we all leave the house every morning….I am tired of worrying if we are all going to make it home.”

Benicia High’s 2022 senior class valedictorian Juhi Yadav followed, and made a profound point, “If you want a gun, the government says that you get to have it, virtually unconditionally. You have a right. But is it right that you have it?”  It  took a minute, but the crowd’s understanding slowly bloomed, as did the applause.  Yadav continued, “In response to tragic and despicable instances of violence, like that in Texas just weeks ago, lobbyists and lawmakers love to enter a fantasy world, where guns are used to protect innocent families from armed gunmen. At every step of the way, they ask, but what if just one of these teachers had been armed – how would the story have changed? The answer is painfully clear. It wouldn’t.”

Benicia High Junior Michael Delgado added a rather stark and shocking perspective. “Three weeks ago, when we heard the news that nineteen children had been murdered in a public school, none of us were surprised,” he began. “These children are the pure among us, the innocent among us, and the most vulnerable among us. They are our future. Time and time again, we watch, and stand idly by, while they are taken from us. A society which allows its future to be slaughtered is a sick society….”

Benicia Poet Laureate Mary Susan Gast concluded the pre-march ceremonies, sharing three poems. Tragically and movingly, the first poem, by former Benicia poet laureate Johanna Ely, was written four years ago, on the occasion of Benicia’s 2018 March For Our Lives, a poem titled, I am tired of waking up to the faces of dead children…. Dr. Gast then read two of her own poems, beginning with One Who Survived Uvalde, describing the heartbreaking story of Miah Cerrillo, who survived the Uvalde massacre by smearing herself with blood of a dead classmate and playing dead.  Gast’s final poem, A Plea to Legislators began, “Deliver us from slaughter,” and ended with the crowd joining in a crescendo of cries, “Do something.  Do SOMETHING.  DO SOMETHING!”

The sidewalks of First Street, Benicia – June 11, 2022

After the March

Marchers returned to the First Street Green for closing remarks and a commemoration of 21 flowers for the 21 who were murdered in Uvalde Texas.

Benicia Mayor Steve Young, file photo

Benicia Mayor Steve Young reported that “There has been a mass shooting every day since Uvalde, and 1500 since Sandy Hook.”  He added, “In 1994, Congress passed an assault weapons ban, and in the next ten years, mass shootings declined by 43%.  Republicans undid the ban in 2004, and mass shootings have increased 239%. Coincidence?” The Mayor’s best line came at the end, and got a big cheer from the crowd: “The only way to stop a bad politician with a vote is with a good citizen with a vote!”

Solano County Supervisor Monica Brown, file photo

Solano County Supervisor Monica Brown added, “Together, we need to elect US senators who believe in our cause. Background checks, a 30 day wait to get a gun…. An example is the recent Tulsa shooting at the hospital. He bought a gun at 2 and by 5pm, 4 were dead plus the shooter. We might say enough is enough, but the effort must be daily until November 7. 2022.”

Mel Orpilla, staff, and US Representative Mike Thompson, file photos

Mel Orpilla, Senior staff for Benicia’s U.S.  representative Mike Thompson, read a message from Thompson, who chairs the House Gun Violence Prevention Taskforce. Thompson has long led an effort to pass universal background checks. “This week,” wrote Thompson, “the House passed two vital bills that join my Bipartisan Background Checks Act and the Enhanced Background Checks Act as gun violence prevention legislation that the House has sent to the Senate.” He continued, “The bills we passed will save lives by raising the age to purchase an assault rifle, restricting large capacity magazines, going after gun traffickers, stopping ghost guns and bump stocks and requiring the safe storage of firearms. The pressure is now on Senate Republicans to do their job and vote for these policies that are overwhelmingly supported by the American people.”

Closing ceremony
ProBonoPhoto.org, photo by Mary Martin DeShaw

The rally concluded with a touching memorial reading of the names of the nineteen children and two teachers murdered in Uvalde, Texas.  As the names were read, March speakers, organizers and supporters were thanked one by one, and presented with one of nineteen individual flowers representing those we lost in Uvalde. 

Video of Highlights by Dr. Constance Beutel (28 minutes)
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Democratic Party, Filibuster, US Senate

Democrats can’t kill the filibuster. But they can gut it.

Three reforms Manchin and Sinema might consider

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) at a Feb. 24 Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing. (Leigh Vogel/AP)
The Washington Post, by Norman Ornstein, March 2, 2021

Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats in January’s runoffs, giving them control of both houses of Congress and the White House for the first time in a decade. But their ability to advance legislation — from raising the federal minimum wage to democracy reforms in the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — can be thwarted by the Senate’s 60-vote supermajority filibuster rule.

Progressives’ anger at Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his caucus, who use the filibuster to block every initiative they can, is nearly matched by their frustration with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), whose opposition to getting rid of the filibuster means Democrats are stuck with it, since they’d need all 50 votes in their caucus, plus Vice President Harris as a tiebreaker, to do it. Last month, the progressive No Excuses PAC, whose leaders helped elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) in 2018, said Manchin and Sinema “stand in the way of progress” by abetting Republican efforts “to shrink their own party’s pandemic relief, climate, and economic investment plans.” The political action committee has talked up primary challenges to both of them to show “‘how angry Democratic primary voters are going to be’ if they continue to support the filibuster.”

Manchin hasn’t budged, though. Monday, when asked if he’d reconsider his stance on eliminating the filibuster, he shot back: “Jesus Christ, what don’t you understand about ‘never’?”

Democrats are right to see the urgency: Republican state lawmakers around the country are moving to enact voter suppression measures that will, if passed, put the slender Democratic majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives in jeopardy in 2022 and beyond. Without democracy reform, and with the Supreme Court’s recent assaults on the Voting Rights Act, sticking with the filibuster could make it nearly impossible for the Biden administration to pursue its agenda.

But Democrats should proceed with caution: In 2001, I warned that if Republicans harangued Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) over his apostasy on their party’s policy priorities, they would regret it. He would switch parties and, in a 50-50 Senate, shift the Senate majority. The next month, it happened. The same concern now applies to Democrats with Manchin. Push too far, and the result could be Majority Leader McConnell, foreclosing Democrats’ avenue to pursue infrastructure, tax reform and health reform legislation.

So, what can Democrats do?

For a West Virginia Democrat, heavy criticism from key members of his own party, up to and including President Biden, might wind up working to Manchin’s advantage. That was true of an earlier apostate, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), who’s been reelected several times after switching from Democrat to Republican in 1994, after butting heads with President Bill Clinton.

Instead of naming and shaming them, Democrats might consider looking at what Manchin and Sinema like about the filibuster. Sinema recently said, “Retaining the legislative filibuster is not meant to impede the things we want to get done. Rather, it’s meant to protect what the Senate was designed to be. I believe the Senate has a responsibility to put politics aside and fully consider, debate, and reach compromise on legislative issues that will affect all Americans.” Last year, Manchin said, “The minority should have input — that’s the whole purpose for the Senate. If you basically do away with the filibuster altogether for legislation, you won’t have the Senate. You’re a glorified House. And I will not do that.”

If you take their views at face value, the goal is to preserve some rights for the Senate minority, with the aim of fostering compromise. The key, then, is to find ways not to eliminate the filibuster on legislation but to reform it to fit that vision. Here are some options:

Make the minority do the work. Currently, it takes 60 senators to reach cloture — to end debate and move to a vote on final passage of a bill. The burden is on the majority, a consequence of filibuster reform in 1975, which moved the standard from two-thirds of senators present and voting to three-fifths of the entire Senate. Before that change, if the Senate went around-the-clock, filibustering senators would have to be present in force. If, for example, only 75 senators showed up for a cloture vote, 50 of them could invoke cloture and move to a final vote. After the reform, only a few senators in the minority needed to be present to a request for unanimous consent and to keep the majority from closing debate by forcing a quorum call. The around-the-clock approach riveted the public, putting a genuine spotlight on the issues. Without it, the minority’s delaying tactics go largely unnoticed, with little or no penalty for obstruction, and no requirement actually to debate the issue.

One way to restore the filibuster’s original intent would be requiring at least two-fifths of the full Senate, or 40 senators, to keep debating instead requiring 60 to end debate. The burden would fall to the minority, who’d have to be prepared for several votes, potentially over several days and nights, including weekends and all-night sessions, and if only once they couldn’t muster 40 — the equivalent of cloture — debate would end, making way for a vote on final passage of the bill in question.

Go back to the “present and voting” standard. A shift to three-fifths of the Senate “present and voting” would similarly require the minority to keep most of its members around the Senate when in session. If, for example, the issue in question were voting rights, a Senate deliberating on the floor, 24 hours a day for several days, would put a sharp spotlight on the issue, forcing Republicans to publicly justify opposition to legislation aimed at protecting the voting rights of minorities. Weekend Senate sessions would cause Republicans up for reelection in 2022 to remain in Washington instead of freeing them to go home to campaign. In a three-fifths present and voting scenario, if only 80 senators showed up, only 48 votes would be needed to get to cloture. Add to that a requirement that at all times, a member of the minority party would have to be on the floor, actually debating, and the burden would be even greater, while delivering what Manchin and Sinema say they want — more debate.

Narrow the supermajority requirement. Another option would be to follow in the direction of the 1975 reform, which reduced two-thirds (67 out of a full 100) to three-fifths (60 out of 100), and further reduce the threshold to 55 senators — still a supermajority requirement, but a slimmer one. Democrats might have some ability to get five Republicans to support their desired outcomes on issues such as voting rights, universal background checks for gun purchases or a path to citizenship for Dreamers. A reduction to 55, if coupled with a present-and-voting standard would establish even more balance between majority and minority.

In a 50-50 Senate, and with the GOP strategy clearly being united opposition to almost all Democratic priorities, Biden and Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) need the support of Manchin and Sinema on a daily basis. They won’t be persuaded by pressure campaigns from progressive groups or from members of Congress. But they might consider reforms that weaken the power of filibusters and give Democrats more leverage to enact their policies, without pursuing the dead end of abolishing the rule altogether.

Headshot of Norman OrnsteinNorman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is a co-author of “One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet Deported.”