"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few."

The liberal activist and abolitionist Wendell Phillips said this in 1852. It's still true today as working American families see their incomes and savings depleted as the rich get richer.

Powerful Americans have always invented new ways to undermine the basic rights of ordinary people. We celebrate this month the anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution in 1920 which prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.

But why the hell did it take so long?

Why did men came up with endless barriers and legal stratagems to deny the vote to women? Why did the eminent judges on the US Supreme Court rule unanimously in 1875 that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give women the right to vote?

Why did powerful Americans deny African Americans the right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 until the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

Today, we ask ourselves the same question: why are men (and some women) supporting Trump and the Republican party and their attempts to give tax favors to the rich, lower working wages, deny women the right to choose and erect barriers to voting by the young, the poor and minorities?

The answer is, we just don't know. We don't know why some powerful people are cruel and greedy and violent.

But we do know that we can defeat them by registering ordinary Americans to vote Democrat all down the ballot on November 8 to protect their rights and create decent wages for working Americans.

August 26, 2016

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