January 19, 2018

Will the fight for diversity reshape the US senate?

located:	USA
editor:	Shira Jeczmien

“We live in trying times. Times of fear, of suppression” reads the voice of Chelsea Manning, former army whistleblower now running for the US senate for Maryland. Her recently published campaign ad is made up of glitched footage from the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville together with flickering images of racial violence and police brutality. “We need to stop expecting that our systems will somehow fix themselves,” Manning’s voice continues as the White House courtyard fountain plays in the background; cascading water vacuumed backwards in slow motion.

After being held in prison for seven years in what the United Nations has denounced as “inhumane” conditions, Manning – a figure who today not only stands for political transparency but for LGBTQ++ rights – has a longstanding Democratic candidate to beat if she’s to become the first transgender woman to ever be elected into the US senate. She will be running against incumbent 74 year old Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin who is running for his third senate term, and is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

#WeGotThis reads Manning’s new campaign hashtag, a call for a complete reshape of the political sphere. Her campaign is anchored in the fight to no longer ask others to accommodate the rights of the underrepresented, the minorities and the LGBTQ++ groups. “We need to stop asking for someone to give us our rights. They won’t support us. [...] We don’t need them anymore. We can do better. We got this.”

If elected, Manning would be the first and only representative voice for the transgender community within the senate, yet she is not alone in her quest diversify the US political sphere. 2017 saw the election of 8 transgender women into city councils, school boards and the staggering win of Democrat Danica Roem into the Virginia House of Delegates.

But with every breakthrough comes the anticipated resistance from a culture not yet willing to let go of the old and in with the revolutionary. Democrats opposing Manning’s running have already painted her candidacy as an espionage tool for the Kremlin, while conservatives are standing against both her court martial sentencing and her transgender identity. Fox news was quick to headline the story as “Sen. Chelsea Manning? To even think about rewarding this criminal with a Senate seat is beyond absurd.”

During her imprisonment, Manning became a monumental force for the rights of LGBTQ++ identifying persons – her work with WikiLeaks proved to be just a glimpse into the fearlessness with which she approaches a political realm congested with conformity, with repression and silencing. Manning is also fighting to become a voice for the previously convicted, something entirely absent from current political representation. It really is time we take matters into our own hands, and with that, #WeGotThis.