I see a few figures, some adults, some students, in the Springbrook main office a little after lunch. I recognize student activists Helina Kassa and Michael Solomon, as well as Justice, Law, and Society teacher Jennifer Laskin and decide to join them since I figure they’re waiting for Congressman Jamie Raskin. I am introduced to a few members of Raskin’s staff and we wait for Raskin to arrive. Once he arrives, we walk together to the auditorium and I finagle a front-row seat.
Before Raskin entered politics in the Maryland state legislature, he was a law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law for many years. He said he always had a “political bug” inside him and that led him to switch from teaching to politics.
He said he was inspired by his late grandfather and Minnesota state senator Samuel Bellman to run for office. Bellman always looked out for and helped the people, Raskin said, and wasn’t looking for fame, glory, or anything else, rather just to help people. Raskin said he does the same, trying to help people the best he can, no matter their political affiliation.
Raskin said he sees himself as occupying the “moral center,” not the “political center.” He came to this realization, he said, after a woman approached him after a speech and told him she was concerned that his position on marriage equality deviated from the political center.
This might explain the power of Raskin’s change in position on Donald Trump’s impeachment: He flipped his position in May to favor impeachment and became her right-hand man for legal questions. In an interview with National Public Radio in December, he said that Trump betrayed the US national security by pressuring Ukraine’s government to investigate Biden and indicated at Springbrook that the Democrats had a moral duty to impeach him, despite the possibility losing the next election.
Raskin also said he constantly thinks about re-election and it influences how he votes. But that is how democracy is supposed to work, he said: Politicians should have their ear to the ground and re-election forces them to listen. He seemed to concede, though, that this focus can impede long-term thinking like climate change.
Partisanship is synonymous with the House of Representatives. Raskin does not think that is a problem, though. In fact, partisanship is an indicator of freedom of speech and therefore a flourishing democracy, he said. He said only a lack of disagreements would be dangerous for the country. That is authoritarianism.
Article and Image by Joel Lev-Tov of Springbrook High School