Welcome to The Breaking Point, a weekly(ish) newsletter that explores the historical legacies of injustice based on the news cycle and culture trends to understand what in the world is going on.
When I launched this newsletter last June, which feels like a lifetime ago, I simply wanted to document the series of unfortunate events that occurred in the first half of 2020. From the wildfires that engulfed Australia to the seemingly endless Covid-19 pandemic, and to the nationwide protests against the police killings of Black people, 2020 was a breaking point for many of us. In case you couldn’t tell, that’s how my newsletter’s name came about.
Besides wanting to feel grounded through writing while hunkered down indoors, I wanted to learn and share the historical context of whatever was trending in the news cycle — from the protests in Portland, Oregon, to Trump attacking the United States Postal Service and even the disproportionate number of Filipino healthcare workers that are risking their lives to save Americans from the deadly virus.
The Breaking Point was supposed to be my personal chronicle of 2020, almost a passion project, a new pandemic hobby, that I could look back to and read a decade or so from now. And in just seven months, readership and engagement grew and the newsletter evolved. I once interviewed a climate activist from Los Angeles County for a story I wrote on the severe impacts of fracking in California, and I was shocked when she told me she was a “big fan” of my newsletter. I didn’t fathom at the time the extent of my words’ reach. So if you’re here reading this, I just want to say thank you.
Photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash
A new year doesn’t mean a tectonic shift in our socio-political landscape. We’re still going through the same pandemic with a new variant making its rounds. The same climate crisis that’s fueling underlying systemic issues in marginalized communities. The same corporate executives and politicians taking sacred land from tribal nations for profit. The same unjust criminal justice system that’s mistreating more people of color. And an even more divided United States. A Joe Biden victory doesn’t automatically negate the historical legacies of racism, pollution, and injustices that make up the very fabric of America. As many would say, there’s still more work to do.
2021 won’t be any different from 2020. It’s rather a sequel, a December 37, a continuation of 2020’s unfortunate events. Just to name a few things that already happened this first week of January: The police officers involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, during the summer’s protests for racial justice in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will not face criminal charges; Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old white Illinois teenager, who fatally shot two people and injured a third during the same protests, also pleaded not guilty to various criminal charges including intentional homicide; President Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the weekend to “find” more votes to overturn election results; Trump’s last-minute sale of drilling rights in parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still expected to happen on Wednesday; and the new Covid-19 variant has reached U.S. shores including New York and California.
But this week, let’s turn to Georgia’s Senate runoff election — a system rooted in the Jim Crow segregation era.
Figure of the week: 11
From Pittsburgh to Compton, “at least 11 U.S. cities are piloting universal basic income programs to give some of their residents direct cash payments, no strings attached.” (Source: Bloomberg CityLab)
By the time you’re reading this newsletter, we probably already know the results of Georgia’s Senate runoff election: either the Republicans maintained their majority or Democrats won a 50-50 split with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.
But let’s take a closer look at the historical legacy of Georgia’s runoff system. As Vox reporter Jerusalem Demsas wrote, the state’s runoff election system has a “darker origin” meant to undermine the influence of Black voters.
At first glance, Georgia’s law requiring majorities for an outright victory seems inoffensive — the person who wins has to be chosen by most of the people who cast their votes. In theory, this would force candidates to appeal to more voters instead of winning with a large plurality of votes while holding views anathema to the majority of the electorate.
But Georgia’s runoff system has a darker origin: Many historians say it was designed to make it harder for the preferred candidates of Black voters to win, and to suppress Black political power.
I highly recommend reading Demsas’s full article here, which provides a much more comprehensive history.
As I previously wrote in this newsletter, Black voter suppression was — and still is — rampant in various ways, especially in the South. In Black communities, mass incarceration and the lack of access to voting polls today were in the early 1900s literacy tests and poll taxes. According to The Washington Post, “when primary and runoff elections were first created, around the beginning of the 20th Century, Republicans were an afterthought. The runoff system is a vestige of a time when white Democrats controlled Southern politics, and manipulated election rules to make sure they stayed in power.”
When the Justice Department sued to overturn the runoff system in 1990, it cited specific elections in more than 20 Georgia counties “where at least 35 Black candidates won the most votes in their initial primaries, but then lost in runoffs as voters coalesced around a white opponent.” The data is baffling. (Seriously, read the Vox story.)
But this moment, too, is historical. In concert with the nationwide protests for racial justice, Black Lives Matter launched a PAC, political action committee, in October, which — the organization’s co-founder Patrisse Cullors told me in an interview last November — would focus on Georgia’s runoff elections to make sure that the same people who showed up for Biden at the polls would show up again this time around.
“Keep fighting locally,” she told me. “The work at the local level is the most important work. What we do at the local level impacts the national work. Our Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter PAC are going to keep doing the work to build a world where all Black lives matter.” Read my full Q&A with Cullors here.
Story breakers 📖
Hawaii’s Beaches Are Disappearing by Ash Ngu, ProPublica, and Sophie Cocke, Honolulu Star-Advertiser
A Black federal investigator says he found a noose at his desk. Years later, he’s still seeking justice by Andrew Boryga, South Florida Sun Sentinel
When COVID hit, a Colorado county kicked out second-home owners. They hit back by Nick Bowlin, High Country News
How organizers of color are changing the political landscape in Georgia (video) by Nani Sahra Walker, Los Angeles Times
The civil rights era was supposed to drastically change America. It didn’t by Stefan M. Bradley, The Washington Post
btw, did you hear about this Mahjong Online fiasco? if not, look it up.
thanks for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already. see you next week!