#HoldTheFloor: a Record Breaking Community Filibuster
It’s not every day you get to be part of breaking a record. Let alone such an awful one.
On May 30th and 31st, I led a community filibuster that lasted 24 hours and 20 minutes and brought together artists, activists, mental health practitioners, and elected office holders from all over the country and around the world to highlight the laws and policies that silence certain voices in order to amplify others. We gathered to break the record for the longest filibuster in US Senate history, set by white supremacist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina in 1957, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights act of 1958. This man was willing to use his right of expression to stand and make the case that not everyone deserved the same rights. His record stood as a monument to America’s racism as much as any statue of a Confederate soldier. And it was toppled the same way - by a community of folks with civic minds and elbow grease.
Our participants talked about voter suppression, surviving gun violence, felon disenfranchisement, mass incarceration, immigration and living in America as an immigrant, living here while trans or gender non-binary, police violence, racism and anti-racism in the American theater, barriers to voting and other human rights for unhoused people, settling here as a refugee, the recent collapse of American support for women and girls in Africa and around the world, the importance of local and state level representation, the trauma that comes from being silenced or having your experience denied and how we create space to heal ourselves, listen to the experiences of others, and summon the energy, courage, and enthusiasm to take an active role in reshaping these rules and laws so that every voice is heard and registered in every community in our country.
But, like I said, we only had 24 hours so we couldn’t get to everything.
My job in all of this was floor holder. I held the floor open (via Instagram Live) for all 24 hours and 20 minutes. The event was organized by myself and producer extraordinaire Alyssa Simmons. Special thanks to Chad Meserve and Marty Perlmutter who worked closely with Alyssa to edit our many hours of footage into this fantastic 5 minute trailer.
You can visit holdthefloor.info to see the list of all of our incredible guests with links to more info on them. And you can visit my instagram page (@bhastert) where each hour of the filibuster is saved as an individual IGTV video. The schedule is listed on the website to help with navigation.
The event was a fundraiser for Field Team 6, a voter registration organization working hard to register Democrats in swing states and districts around the country and get out the vote to ensure that more voices get heard this election than ever before. We raised some good money on the day, but there remains much to do and you can still support their efforts.
This was one of the most profound events I have ever been a part of. I want to express my immense gratitude to everyone who shared their voice and their experience, to everyone who watched, shared, commented, and donated. We got a lot of positive feedback from viewers, and a lot of questions about what the next steps might be to keep advancing these principles. Happy to say we’ve been working on a follow up project… announcement coming soon!