We Can Be Brooms
You may be puzzled by this title, “We Can Be Brooms.”
The inspiration for this month’s title came from an article by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, The Nation’s civil rights correspondent as well as president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. “Time for a Deep Clean” by Dr. Barber appeared in the July/August 2026 issue of The Nation.
This title particularly struck me because, as I mentioned in last month’s post, I am moving to Ashland, Oregon on August 20. In preparation for selling our house of 33 years, we hired deep cleaners to clean all those hard to get the places that really needed cleaning.
Dr. Barber uses this analogy for our country! “Like the great movements of our past that have attempted to fill the American house with justice, today’s sweepers must be justice sweepers, moral sweepers, love sweepers.”
In this election year, “we must deep-clean the American house if we hope to fill this house with the establishment of justice, the provision for the common defense, the promotion of the general welfare, domestic tranquility, and equal protection for all. We have to sweep out the powerful political forces that are the antithesis of this nation’s highest ideals, and each of us must become a broom!”
In 2024, the last federal election, “almost 90 million Americans did not vote!”
Here are just a few of the accomplishments that our sweeping out the old will permit: ending forever wars, fair compensation for labor, raising the minimum wage, expanding overtime, repealing tax cuts for the super-rich, protecting labor organizing, investing in college and vocational education, closing tax loopholes, cracking down on tax cheats, removing red tape that impedes housing construction, providing universal childcare and paid family leave, expanding the child tax credit, expanding affordable healthcare, and taking on corporate power and the billionaires who are making it impossible for the American people to provide for themselves and their families.
Barber’s grandmother prized the broom that she used to do a deep-cleaning before she brought in a new piece of furniture.
Our vote is our broom. We must use our broom to sweep out the old “body politic” that will make it possible for us as a nation to fulfill the promise of our founding 250 years ago.
Our Broom – Our Vote!
John Lewis said, “the vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have to preserve our democracy.” Let us use our broom, our vote, to sweep out the dirt and grime that have prevented us from creating the democratic potential we have never fulfilled.
