People should not work or shop, the student said
A Cornell University student argued in an opinion piece today that the country should be prepared for a “general strike” in the event “Republicans steal the election.”
“The 2020 election is an inflection point,” in the “Republican assaults on democracy,” according to Elijah Fox, a student at the Ivy League university.
“If Trump steals the election by way of the already-packed courts, we, the People, should launch a general boycott of the economy,” Fox said.
Citizens should “not work” and should “not shop.”
Begin to withdraw all your money from your bank accounts,” the opinion piece said. “Special interests will force their Republican lap dogs to preserve the economy and protect their bottom line and turn on Trump,” Fox argued.
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He explained to his readers the ways the Republican Party has torn down the country.
He wrote in the student paper The Cornell Daily Sun:
Many (although none of my peers) recall the destructive force of Newt Gingrich as he slashed and burned his way through political norms. More know of the 2000 presidential election being stolen by way of a Supreme Court’s slim Republican-appointed majority. Fewer know that the Court would have never had the opportunity to steal the election, if not for the state’s racist practice of felon-disenfranchisement. George W. Bush then went on to appoint the Supreme Court justices who effectively overturned the Voting Rights Act of 1965, clearing the way for Southern states to impose draconian restrictions on voting, with a disproportionate effect on Black people. Following successful midterms in 2010, Republicans redrew district lines in the most extreme act of gerrymandering ever, diminishing the electoral power of Black and Democratic voters ‘with surgical precision.’
Fox’s reference to the Voting Rights Act refers to the 2013 Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder. The decision removed the requirement that certain states in the South obtain approval from the federal government for any changes to election procedures, including moving a polling place.
Fox continued his opinion piece with a criticism of the Electoral College.
He wrote:
We have heard a lot recently that five out of nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. While this is true, the more thorough story is more sinister.
These five justices were appointed by presidents whose elections — thanks certainly to racist voter suppression and possible to (sic) foreign intervention as well — should be understood as illegitimate. In the case of Bush, at least, the governed did eventually give their consent. The same cannot be said of Donald Trump. And it certainly will not be true if he seizes power following this year’s election.
While Fox referred to the contested 2000 election and the two justices appointed by President George W. Bush, Justice Alito and Justice Roberts, he does not explain why the other justices should be considered illegitimate.
President George H.W. Bush appointed Justice Thomas and Justices Scalia and Kennedy were appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
He referred to Republican efforts to win the election as a “coup.”
“A successful coup would both undo all our gains to date and entrench minority Republican power for generations,” Fox said.
He warned of “eight of nine Supreme Court Justices being Republican-appointed — five of them by Trump,”
“Imagine another ten years of extreme racial gerrymandering” and “(i)magine voter suppression on an even larger institutional scale,” Fox said.
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