Earlier this week, a woman walked into my local coffee shop wearing a t-shirt that read “hip-hop over politics.” Normally, I wouldn’t have given the shirt a second thought. As an old-school hip-hop head, I might have started Googling to track down the shirt for myself. This day was different.

I paused and pondered for a moment whether the message was one I could support at this crucial inflection point in America’s democratic experiment. The answer is an emphatic no.

The stakes are too high for anyone to sit on the sidelines. In January, an NPR/Ipsos poll found that 64% of Americans believe our democracy is at risk. Last week in a new CBS News poll, 54% of respondents believe the United States will become “less of a democracy” within a generation. America is suffering a crisis of belief.

It’s not hard to decipher why the American public is deeply concerned about the future of democracy. For the past several years, there has been a steady assault on the foundations of America’s democratic institutions. Whether it is the purveyors of debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections or those merchants of grievance politics who promote the myth that America is a white Christian nation, it’s difficult not to feel America is amid its own dark night of the soul.

Unfortunately, Colorado, circa 2022, is not immune from these dynamics. So, I wasn’t completely surprised when I first read the Colorado Newsline story about the House District 10 race in Boulder.

This race pits Democratic candidate Junie Joseph against Republican candidate Bill DeOreo. Joseph is a Black woman who is also a Haitian immigrant. DeOreo is a white man.

According to Newsline, DeOreo had this to say about Joseph on the Nextdoor app: “Do we want to be represented by a Haitian immigrant to whom top priority is immigrant rights, and voting by non-citizens?”

In a later interview with Newsline, DeOreo went on to state “The issue is she is a Haitian immigrant…” It is beyond audacious to say, Joseph, an American citizen, is disqualified from public office because she is an immigrant. More plainly, DeOreo is saying Joseph is an outsider who doesn’t belong in American civic life.

America has a long history of excluding marginalized groups from the political process. Colorado is no different. One of the most outrageous yet little-known instances of deliberate voter disenfranchisement occurred in Colorado. In the 1914 general election at polling places in Huerfano County, union members, union organizers, and anyone thought to be a labor sympathizer were physically restrained from voting.

Union membership marked you as an anti-American communist. An outsider to the American way. At some point in history, the poor, the landless, women, indigenous people, and people of color have all been denied the very thing that makes citizenship real. The right to vote.

In a democratic society belonging is defined by access to the ballot box. Despite the words of the Declaration of Independence, “we the people” has not always included all the people.

Because my family was poor when I was growing up in Washington, D.C., childcare was not readily accessible or affordable. I often found myself at my mother’s side at various political events. I didn’t always understand the important words being said at these events, but I did come to understand it was something that had to be done. It had to be done because too many were being excluded from the democratic process.

It had to be done because my great grandfather, Charles Carroll, a formerly enslaved Black man, never had his humanity fully recognized by the law.

It had to be done because my grandfather, John Henry Carroll, a sharecropper living in the segregated south, died before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It had to be done because my mother, Corine Carroll, a fierce Black woman with little formal education, could not fully exercise the franchise until her late forties.

And it still must be done because there are those like Bill DeOreo who want to exclude folks like Junie Joseph from our democratic experiment because they are not the right kind of immigrants.

It still must be done because folks like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green tweet “I’m a proud Christian nationalist.”

It still must be done because there are some who think standing up for our democracy is part of the leftist agenda.

It still must be done because our democracy needs all of us right now.

Terrance Carroll is a former speaker of the Colorado House. The first and only African American to ever hold that position in Colorado. He is a Baptist preacher, attorney, and former police officer. He is on Twitter @speakercarroll.

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