Dear Democrats in Congress and Disaffected Progressives Everywhere Else: May I Remind You That Harriet Tubman Carried a Gun?

Here I am, the cat-loving, pacifist, gun-control lady, asserting that right now we Dems need more of the spirit of Harriet Tubman and less quaking in our boots in the home stretch of the Underground Railroad.

Do you know why Harriet Tubman carried a gun? This audacious nineteenth century former slave courageously risked her life every time she traveled south of the Mason-Dixon line to guide slaves north, where they would no longer be property, but free human beings. The bounty on runaway slaves was absurdly high. Slave owners tracked runaway slaves with dogs. They hunted escaped people like animals. If caught, horrific whippings or worse would be administered and the slaves returned to the plantations they were trying to escape. The penalty for discovery, for being a mistaken or unlucky guide, was high.

It's almost unimaginable what people endured--both under the system of slavery and while endeavoring to be free.

And yet. There might be a person who lost their resolve somewhere between Virginia and Maryland. Someone who suffered a failure of nerve. Who wasn't careful about the rules of hidden travel. Who, again, unimaginably, might want to turn back. Or stop off somewhere and try to eke out a living on the wrong side of the state line delineating lesser personhood and subjugation from self-determination and free will. That one person's failure of nerve would endanger all the other people in the group running toward freedom.

So Harriet Tubman was prepared to shoot dead those who were faint of heart. She was said to tell the people she was leading north, "You'll be free or die." Now, that's resolve. If people ran out of courage at key moments, she was willing to lend them hers.

History doesn't record if Harriet ever had to use her "persuader". (I doubt it as she boasted she "never lost a one.") But after she herself escaped to freedom in the north, she went back into slave territory 19 times and helped over 300 slaves reach freedom. All the terror of leaving everything you know, even if deep inside you know it's wrong; and the terror of the appalling consequences she'd face if caught? She confronted and overcame that fear 19 times.

Now, like I said, I'm really a gun-control "use-your-words" peacenik. I heartily disapproved of actual open carry at last summer's health care townhalls. There is a way that bullies find courage in carrying or threatening to use a gun. And in no way am I suggesting an equivalency between people who lack health care and slaves.

But. The point about Tubman's resolve and commitment still stands. People will lose faith at every step of the way toward something that is all to their good because the road to it is hard and dangerous.

Democrats in Congress--you spent the last four months of 2009 telling us why we need health insurance reform. And we the people agreed. The 45,000 people a year who'll die because they lack health insurance will STILL die if this bill dribbles away into nothing. Women will still be charged more for insurance and/or be underinsured. Pre-existing conditions will still be used by insurance companies to deny people coverage.

In short, all the damn good reasons for passing health insurance reform--all of the suffering that needs to stop--WILL STILL BE THERE if you drop this bill instead of passing it.

Which is why you'd better vote yes on the final version and get it to President Obama to sign AS SOON AS YOU CAN. Find. A. Way. Let this bill die and you'll have wasted your own time and the time of millions of people who have doggedly contacted their elected representatives and shown up to town halls and reached out to neighbors, friends, family, and co-workers. Wait for the next go-'round? What, when we have a 100-seat majority in the Senate? Give those GOPers and Teabaggers an inch, and they'll take a mile.

This IS the last mile. You don't give up in the last mile. Put your feet back on the right road.

Disaffected progressive Democrats--that goes double for you. Kill the bill, because it's not progressive enough? Really? Are you out of your mind? It's not a perfect bill, but maybe you lost sight of the goal of enacting health care reform in the frenzy to prove your point. Maybe the drama of opposition is more comforting than the tediously necessary and sometimes dull work of consistently electing more and better Democrats so we can fix our legislative branch, now that problems with our executive branch have been addressed, somewhat.(The problems we have with the judiciary will have to wait another day.)

All right, I'm putting on my asbestos underwear in anticipation of the obtuse people who'll come at me with accusations of (false) equivalencies and projections of their craziness on me. Whatever.

Just find your inner Harriet Tubman. Fast.

/rant

Cynematic doesn't have the time to write this, or update her blog at P i l l o w b o o k. She believes in using her words. Sometimes sharp words are necessary.

Comments

[Julie Pippert]

A.Wo.Men!