Washington — Last night, Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) joined advocates, activists, and labor leaders for a livestream event to discuss how the Senate is broken, what is at stake next year if it isn’t fixed, and what people can do to join the fight right now and in the months ahead. Grassroots organizers spoke about mobilizing people across the country to engage on this issue and fight to fix the Senate as quickly as possible next year.
The event was convened by Fix Our Senate in partnership with 21 other organizations (full list below) and has been viewed by nearly 190,000 people so far. Speakers encouraged viewers to sign the petition calling for the elimination of the filibuster as a tool that McConnell can use to continue his obstruction and block any progress.
Senator Merkley: “If the filibuster was about producing compromise you would see an explosion of compromise, given there's been an explosion of the use of the filibuster, so that's simply a myth. But it's even darker than that. We have to turn the clock back to the 1950s and realize that the filibuster was all about denying civil rights to communities of color in our country.”
Senator Warren: “Think about the list of things that needs to be done in this country: action on climate change, voting rights, racial justice, gun safety, helping families by canceling student loan debt, building universal childcare, expanding Social Security. On each one of these issues, the filibuster gives Mitch McConnell the power to just say no....I’m not for filibuster reform because I think it will solve every problem. I’m for filibuster reform because without it, we can’t solve any problem.”
Rahna Epting, Executive Director of MoveOn and co-moderator of the event: “What we're seeing right now from Mitch McConnell is that he's trying to jam through another extreme Supreme Court nominee in the midst of an election...His ability to do this makes it crystal clear just how broken the Senate already is…[Democrats] need to eliminate the filibuster as a tool that McConnell can use to keep blocking progress for people, and they need to make sure that the Senate can start delivering results for the American people.”
Larry Cohen, Chairman, Our Revolution and co-moderator of the event: “It's the rules, not just the rulers. As important as the election is, the rules are why we can't get our bills to the floor...the question is how we get a government that can actually break through the gridlock and the dysfunction and deliver the results our families and communities need. So 99% of all of our energy should be focused on the coming weeks, but we need just 1% to focus on how we're going to fix the Senate next year.”
"The remarkable part of our story is that it's unremarkable, and here's the thing, right, we know that communities across the country are impacted by gun violence every single day. We know that 90% of Americans support common sense measures like universal background checks. The only building where we can’t get agreement to push things across the finish line is in the US Senate. That's because the rules are intentionally stacked against the majority of Americans," said Christian Heyne, Vice President for Policy at Brady United. “I sat in the (Senate) gallery in 2013 when the filibuster was used to prevent universal background checks… we have to do better.”
Gustavo Torres, president of CASA, urged filibuster reform on behalf of nearly one million Dreamers who are relying on the Senate to act: “We need to fix the Senate, because [the filibuster] is as President Obama called it, a Jim Crow relic, and it has been historically used to block progress on equality and freedom for all Americans...There is so much we need to do right now to protect our communities, keep our families together, and finally pass immigration reform that our country needs...To us this isn't about Senate rules. It’s about our lives, our families, our community.”
Ady Barkan, co-founder of Be A Hero and a director at the Center for Popular Democracy, said that the stakes are too high to repeat the same mistakes of 2009 when it comes to health care and the filibuster, saying a public option in the Affordable Care Act “had the support of more than 51 senators, but it was killed by the anti-democratic, racist filibuster. A decade later, our health care crisis is worse than ever. The Covid pandemic has exposed how egregious our system is, and we are still trying to win a public option. We cannot afford a repeat of the 2009 debacle… if we want to finally pass a public option, if we want to have any hope of ever enacting Medicare-for-all, then we absolutely have to abolish the filibuster. It is the single most important step we can take to achieve health care justice.”
Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP offered a historical perspective on the filibuster: “The Senate rules have long been used as a tool to impede progress, primarily by Southern legislators...who saw threats where there were no threats, particularly in giving rights to African Americans....It was the Senate rules that weakened the Civil Rights Act and has prevented the Voting Rights Act from moving forward...That's why as we move forward, we must revise the rules in the Senate, and king of those rules is the filibuster.”
On labor issues and strengthening unions across the country, Shane Larson, Senior Director for Government Affairs and Policy at Communications Workers of America, stressed the importance of abolishing the filibuster to fight income inequality: “When workers are able to join unions, and those unions are strong, inequality goes down, the economy grows, and we are all better off. If we are ever going to address economic inequality, safe workplaces, racism, sexism in the workplace, and lift up all workers, we must reform our labor laws that make it virtually impossible for workers to join unions. If Democrats win in November, [leaders] have made it clear that labor law reforms like the PRO Act, which gives workers real power, will be a critical part of any economic recovery package… but if Democrats win in November, we should not need to go beg Mitch McConnell just for permission to have a debate about it.”
Shante Wolfe, field director for the Sunrise Movement, pointed out that the health of our communities and the planet depend on the Senate’s ability to meet the moment, and the Senate can’t do that without getting rid of the filibuster: “We at Sunrise understand that as long as the filibuster is allowed to continue, the United States Senate is an absolute roadblock to the kind of policies we need to tackle the climate crisis, our economic crisis, our health care crisis, and we’ve been organizing across the country to tell Senators that the policies we need are completely contradictory to everything that Mitch McConnell and his fossil fuel donors stand for. November is the first step, but we’re thinking long term...we are done with incremental change and we are done letting the filibuster stand in the way of progress.”
Participating groups included:
51 for 51
AFL-CIO
Be A Hero Fund
Brady
California Progressive Caucus
Campaign For America’s Future
CASA
Center for Popular Democracy
Climate Hawks Votes
Communications Workers of America
Daily Kos
Democracy Initiative
Fix Our Senate
Friends of the Earth
Indivisible
MoveOn
NAACP
Our Revolution
People’s Action
Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Roots Action
Sunrise Movement
Working Families Party
AFL/CIO
Be a Hero
Brady United
CA Progressive Caucus
CASA
Communications Workers of America
Friends of the Earth
Maine People’s Alliance
MoveOn
NAACP
Our Revolution
Sunrise Movement