Who Is Brave Enough To Stand With Rep. Nicole Collier?
Who Is Brave Enough To Stand With Texas State Rep. Nicole Collier?
History is never defined by those who protested on the sidewalks. Or those who shout from the sidelines. Or make pithy posts about what should happen. Those people choose the safety of obeying the law as they protest the obscenity of those very laws. There’s not a lot of courage in that, and no one remembers them.
History is instead defined by those who walk off the sidewalk and into the streets to protest the existence of unfair processes, traditions, laws, and confront those who aim to put them under the heel of those laws. It is not about cooperating with the machine that produces these things, but disrupting the machine itself.
Mario Savio, the 1960s Berkeley student who famously protested the lack of free speech at Berkeley by jumping on top of a police car, eloquently stated it.
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!”
And that brings me to the machinery of Texas state politics and the undemocratic gerrymandering that Republican Governor Greg Abbott wants to do to give his political puppetmaster, Donald Trump, five Republican seats. To do it, Abbott and the Texas legislature needed a quorum, so to prevent that, Democratic legislative members fled the state for two weeks.
Threatened with hundreds of thousands in fines, and with the state requesting federal intervention by the FBI to find and bring them back to the state, the Texas Democrats returned to the state after the Texas legislature ended their special session without a quorum, preventing a vote on the racist redistricting. Also, California Governor Gavin Newsom effectively stymied the Texas move by announcing that California would add five seats to counter Texas’s move.
And so they came back, but with a caveat from the Republican led legislature. They were told that to leave the chamber, they’d have to be released into the custody of a public service office, and sign a permission slip acknowledging that they were to be in that custody. But Texas state representative Nicole Collier said no and refused to leave. She ‘stepped into the street,’ while others stayed on the sidewalk.
After refusing the police escort or signing a release allowing herself to be in their custody, the Texas legislature locked Collier in the chamber, where she’ll stay until Wednesday, when the legislature meets again to process its racist agenda.
“This is just my way of resisting,” Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier said to the Washington Post.
There’s something obscenely poetic that a Black woman is the one who has the resolve to stand in the street, put her body on the gears of the machine, and to, as the kids like to say, stand on business, while everyone else acquiesces. That level of courage comes from understanding that as a Black woman, you walk this earth with few allies other than your courage and intelligence. But like Rep Collier, when you choose to lead, often when you look to see who’s following, the stage is empty.
But that’s okay.
“At what point, what is it going to take for us to say ‘enough is enough?’ Yesterday was my moment. Enough is enough,” Collier said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I see it. The writing is on the wall. They want power at all costs. And you’re not taking it from me without a fight.”
Each attack on Black women, whether it be Trump attacking Texas Congresswoman Jazmine Crockett; or the GOP, and not a few white Democrats, denigrating former vice president Kamala Harris; or the fact that Black women are the top target being hurt by cuts to federal jobs during the Elon Musk led DOGE cuts, is a marker that twenty million Black women will not forget.
And like Texas State Representative Collier, they’ll head to the midterm polls not because of a loyalty to the Democratic Party or even a hatred of the Republican Party. They’ll go because they know that to empower themselves, to prevent GOP racists from disenfranchising them, they’ll need to speak up for themselves because no one else will.
So Rep. Nicole Collier now sits and sleeps in the chamber, but she’s not about to let them get her down. While her lawyers fight the detention, she made herself right at home, complete with a bonnet to protect her beautiful, black hair. In the tradition of Black folks everywhere, Texas Rep. Collier may have been stripped of her right to leave, but she’s not stripped of her right to make do with the situation as she sees it.
“My community has sent me here to be a fighter, and this is the way that I am fighting. They’re taking away our vote,” Collier added, in an interview with the Washington Post. “I’m not going to let them take away my voice.”
Fighting a fascist government requires more people acting like Collier, willing to stand for what’s right. To put their bodies on the gears of the machine. To stand in the street while others are on the sidewalk. Only then do you defeat those who’d marginalize you. Who’d disenfranchise you. Who’d convince you that your power is illusionary. Because if you don’t resist, they win.
And in that way, Rep. Collier has already won and will be remembered long after the hoary policies of racist Texas legislatures are condemned to the dustbin of history. And as usual, in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer, it will be Black women who are ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired,’ and yet will still step into that street. The question is whether anyone will be behind them in support.
Are you courageous enough to stand behind her?
Lawrence Ross is the author of “The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities” and “Blackballed: The Black & White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses.” He’s also the founder of TheMetaphorClub.com, a new social media platform that emphasizes community, selflessness, and authentic relationships. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, April.
SEE ALSO:
Texas Rep. Nicole Collier Being Held Hostage At State House
Political Prisoner Rep. Nicole Collier Defies Republicans
Who Is Brave Enough To Stand With Texas State Rep. Nicole Collier? was originally published on newsone.com
