Is Nancy Pelosi the ‘White Moderate’ MLK Warned Us About?

The Speaker’s recent actions call into question if she’s truly an ally

Danielle Moodie
ZORA

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Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

In his famous 1963 writing, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. offered this:

“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been greatly disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

Since the gavel was returned to her hands in the 2018 midterm “blue tsunami” election, countless memes and stories have been written celebrating the “power” and “strategic wizardry” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Yet, in the many, many months following the Democrats’ historic win and America’s first electoral denunciation of Donald Trump, we have seen little action taken against the president. Sure, there are six House committee investigations underway, a 448-page memo produced on Trump’s many impeachable offenses by former special counsel Robert Mueller, and subpoenas galore that have been issued and subsequently ignored…

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