On the morning of the 6th of December, 1648, soldiers under the command of Col. Thomas Pride took their positions outside of the English Parliament. This was no normal morning, nor were they the usual guard—they had dismissed the militia when it had arrived. No, Pride and his men were there for an altogether different purpose. As MPs began arriving, Col. Pride checked their names to a list. Those who were on it, members of the Peace Party, who had voted to continue negotiations with the King to restore his rule, were arrested. Others, such as Denzil Holles, upon hearing of the purge, fled the country. With the moderates removed from Parliament, the road that led to the regicide, and to the republic, was cleared.
Members of Parliament may have kicked off the civil war against the King, but it was not they who died and suffered over its course. Pride’s Purge happened because of Parliament’s decision to continue to try to come to a settlement with a monarch who obviously had no interest in coming to an agreement, even after a decade of war left 200,000 dead. For the men of the New Model Army, a return to the status quo ante bellum was unthinkable, not when so many of their friends had perished in the conflict. What would it all have been for?
Today we are not in an open civil war. There are no battles nor armies. Armed men do not roam the country. But that does not mean that we have not suffered in our fight against our own tyrant. Over the course of the government shutdown, the longest in history, federal workers went without pay, and people went without food. Immigrants continue to be disappeared, our cities are under occupation and lives are ruined. And we, The People, have put our heart and soul into opposition. The largest protests in American history happened just a few weeks ago, and after tireless work, we dealt a colossal blow to Trump in the elections last Tuesday. And then Senate Democrats gave in. Our own Peace Party.
What was it all for?
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Senators have cushy lives. They have given nothing. For them, standing up to Trump, is to cast a vote. They take on no risks, face no consequences, put in no effort. They continued to be paid through the shutdown.
Yesterday, Maine Senator Angus King had the gall to claim that he stood up to Trump, and that it simply did not work. He did not. He voted with the Republicans at every opportunity from the start. Throughout the past year, at every turn elites and elite institutions—universities, corporations, the media—those with power have caved and collaborated, while those of us without power, just everyday Americans, have thrown our bodies at the machine. We stood up to Trump; Senator King and the other cowards did not.
For 40 days, Senate Democrats held out, but in the end they caved in exchange for a false promise of a future vote they will surely lose. They simply rolled over and surrendered. All of the talk of saving healthcare subsidies was empty words. The shutdown, and the ways it negatively impacted people’s lives, was for nothing.
What was it all for?
Our supposed “leaders,” corrupted by the Senate, lack the will and moral fortitude that the average person off the street holds. So yes, they too must be purged, not with armed men on the steps of congress, but with the ballots of voters. But it cannot end there.
Biden’s victory in 2020 promised a return to normalcy. The same strategy of moderation and compromise that now brings the shutdown to a close, squandered the political opportunity that followed January 6th to remake the country. We did not move forward, but instead found ourselves back and even further so than before.
It is clear that we need a full transformation of American democracy, one that can destroy the power of the Trumpist cause, and render anything similar impossible. To do anything less would be a betrayal, a treason of its own. We cannot choose to tinker around the edges, to make minor procedural changes to our government, an adjustment here, a switch there, but a Reconstruction down to the very foundations of our republic. Not court reform, but the immediate removal of judges. Not the end of the filibuster, but the Senate’s abolition. Not mere dismissal for ICE Agents and Republican officials, but trials for their illegal acts. We must approach the second Trump term as an aberration, the Oval Office is sede vacante, everything it has done is a crime, no different than if the Confederacy occupied Washington.
We must also understand that liberty and democracy are incompatible with the amassing of immense wealth, not when billionaires can purchase our country like a common commodity. This is no new observation, it is centuries old. But our failure to heed it, to do anything to rein in the sycophantic oligarchs around the president—who even now enrich themselves at the expense of the public—is dooming us to despotism. To overturn our political system, without also revolutionizing our economic one, would be a grave miscalculation. Their fortunates are more dangerous than any weapon the agents of the state may use against us; they must be disarmed.
We cannot delay our preparations until 2028. Instead we must act now. We need to prepare campaigns and find candidates, put pressure on existing electeds through legislative efforts, street protests, strikes, and above all to get organized because our enemies surely are. We must ensure anyone we put forward has the steely resolve to chart the course we have set, any who will falter cannot be allowed to stand. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
After the American Civil War, the blood that soaked the land was transubstantiated into the Reconstruction Amendments (amendments that Trump now seeks to undo). These holy documents—laws that undid the evil of slavery—radically reshaped our country. Their authors understood, on a profound level, that the deaths and sacrifices of the prior four long years meant it was for them “the living…to be dedicated here to the unfinished work,” as Lincoln put it. Millions could not be marched back into bondage after all that had happened. Otherwise what would it all have been for?
Yesterday the Senate Democrats caved, selling us out. They will do it again. We should not put our faith in them for they care little of the struggles and sacrifices of the past 40 days, of the past year, of the past decade, for they do not themselves struggle and sacrifice. But we do, we who have been unpaid and unfed, beaten at protests, faced discrimination, harassed, left homeless, arrested, deported, murdered. We who have borne the brunt of Trump’s policies, over the shutdown and the past decade, understand. And so when it is our turn, we will not hesitate. We will not cave.