Since launching my congressional campaign back in March, one thing has become increasingly clear to me: there are two kinds of people in politics right now. First, there is the “politics as usual crowd” — the people who continue to perform, play political games and treat this moment like any other in modern American political history.

Then there are those who I call “the urgency of the moment crowd.” This group consists of folks who understand that our institutions, our democracy and our basic civil rights are being tested in real time. I am decidedly in this second camp.

I am running for Congress in Kansas’ Fourth District because I believe this moment demands leaders who recognize the moral urgency of this moment and are rooted in service, integrity, accountability and the courage to put people over party. We need that leadership now more than ever. 

If you have ever wondered where you would have stood during the defining social movements of our history, look no further than the mirror and ask yourself: where are you standing now?

Since the Supreme Court issued its recent decision on the “Voting Rights Act” in Louisiana v. Callais, I’ve been thinking a lot about the late great civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis. His words still echo: “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.”

There is one story in particular that I often return to because I think it exemplifies exactly the kind of action Lewis was talking about.

In the early 1960s, Lewis helped organize the Freedom Rides, an effort to challenge segregation on interstate bus lines. He was one of the original Freedom Riders who made their way into the Deep South. When they reached Birmingham, Alabama, violence broke out. Buses were burned. Protestors were brutalized. The Kennedy administration wanted the rides to stop, fearing more bloodshed.

Back in Nashville, Lewis’ counterpart at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a brave young organizer named Diane Nash, was not going to let that happen. Nash stepped forward to organize the next wave of riders in Tennessee. She was 22 years old.

The night before Nash and her group were to leave for Alabama, Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s DOJ official on the ground, John Seigenthaler, called Nash to warn of the violence that awaited her and her fellow riders down South. 

Their exact words are left to history but their exchange went something like this: Seigenthaler pleaded with Nash not to come: “Young lady, you don’t understand—if you come here, people are going to die!” To which, Diane Nash responded, without missing a beat: “With all due respect, sir — you don’t understand…we signed our wills last night.”

Lewis, Nash and the other Freedom Riders understood they were putting their lives on the line. But they also understood that silence in the face of injustice was not an option.

Their courage helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — landmark achievements that many Americans of my generation grew up taking for granted. Think about it: many Americans of my parents’ generation bled and died for the simple right to vote. Yet today, we are literally witnessing the rollback of civil rights under the guise of “eliminating DEI” and the near complete erosion of the Voting Rights Act — and both are happening in broad daylight! The consequences are real.

In the Callais decision, the Supreme Court further enabled partisan gerrymandering while simultaneously restricting race-conscious remedies designed to protect minority voting power. In doing so, it fueled the perversion of the system and accelerated a dangerous race to the bottom when it comes to partisan gerrymandering. The result is a system that increasingly allows politicians to draw maps that protect their own power rather than ensure fair representation for the people they serve.  

When elected officials choose their voters instead of voters choosing their representatives, we no longer have a functioning democracy. That’s where we are and it’s time we had leaders who told the truth about it. 

History rarely announces itself while it is happening. But future generations will look back on this moment and ask whether we defended our democratic ideals when it mattered the most.

They will ask whether we sat on our hands while those in power took a wrecking ball to the hard-fought victories of the civil rights movement, or whether we held them to account for their egregious behavior and stood up and fought for the next generation.

For me, this fight is personal. My children’s future representation is on the line. Their ability to fully participate in American democracy is on the line.

That is why, if I have the privilege of serving in Congress, one of my top priorities will be restoring voting protections, supporting independent redistricting commissions and increasing access to the ballot by passing legislation akin to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Because the right to vote is the foundation of every other right we claim to value in this country. And if we allow that foundation to crack for some Americans, eventually it will crack for all of us.

We don’t face state mandated segregation or firebombed buses. But we do face a President who thinks he’s above the law. We face lawmakers who are capitulating their constitutional responsibilities. We face threats to a free press and disinformation campaigns on a historic scale. We face the dangerous normalization of political violence and corruption. We face, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “the fierce urgency of now.”

MLK Jr., John Lewis, Diane Nash and their brethren understood something fundamental: democracy is never self-executing. Every generation must decide whether it is willing to defend it.

This is our generation’s test. It is not time to grow quiet. It is time, once again, to act.

— Katy Tyndell 

Candidate for Congress in Kansas’ Fourth District