On this week of Juneteenth, America watched as a leader stepped forward to tell her stories with grace under pressure. Unbridled heroism, unfettered patriotism and steely courage under life-threatening pressure.
That leader wasn’t Mike Pence, who did the right thing on January 6th after doing the wrong thing for the four years preceding. Despite their admirable and steadfast dedication to their oaths, I’m not referring to the Arizona Speaker of the House or the Georgia Secretary of State or his deputy.
All of these men did the right thing when called upon by none other than the president of the United States to take illegal actions to commit massive election fraud. They all refused. They were all intimidated and threatened. Their families were threatened. There’s no doubt in my mind that they and their families were traumatized by the event following the 2020 election.
Sworn in to testify to the House Select Committee yesterday was Shaye Moss – citizen of Georgia and county elections employee in her community. An ordinary person. With her mother, Ruby Freeman (“Miss Ruby”) seated behind her, Moss stood before this committee and raised her hand to swear she would tell the truth about her experience in working at a polling place during a pandemic. Doing a job she held for 10 years and loved.
She loved working for the elections office, she said, because her mother and grandmother instilled in her the understanding of what a precious and honorable thing it is that they could vote. She enjoyed registering first time voters, getting absentee ballots to elderly and disabled voters, to students who were away at college.
Moss didn’t put it in these words, but what I heard were the nuts and bolts of an American citizen who loved the very local mechanics of making democracy happen.
Then she explained that when Donald Trump and Rudy Guliani got their hands on some video that showed her mother handing something to her at the polling place where Moss was working, they falsely described it as a USB drive (about the size of a stick of gum) with some imaginary sinister intent. It was a ginger mint, Moss testified – under oath.
No matter. The president and his thug “attorney” were all over conservative media calling Moss’s mother “a professional vote scammer” and “a hustler.” They called her by name, repeatedly. White men disparaging Black women in this way is a tale as old as time.
As January 6th approached, Miss Ruby was advised by the FBI that, for her own safety, she should not remain in her home. The FBI did not escort her to a safe house or the nearest Marriott. She was on her own to find somewhere else to live … for two months.
Could you do that?
Moss was threatened multiple times including a bizarre misrepresentation by Trevian Kutti (Kanye West’s publicist) which was all recorded on video in a police station. Kutti said to Moss that she was “a loose end for a party to tie up.”
Moss, plainly nervous about this public testimony, gathered her courage and walked through the whole story. Miss Ruby and Moss’s grandmother have done a fine job of raising this woman. She has more guts and integrity than every politician in that building yesterday.
Here’s the thing, though. When she finished and all the handshaking and hugging was done, she continued in her status as an ordinary person. She didn’t leave with a security entourage. She’s left her election office job as have most of the officials who worked the polls at that site in 2020.
She is still under threat and so is the election process in her community. We focus (correctly) on the egregious abuse of power committed by Trump and his thugs, but he is standing before a parade of white supremacists who are excessively armed and extremely dangerous.
The system is blinking red.
Photo via AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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