The WV legislative session ended on April 10, a 60 day stretch that felt like an eternity. I had to take a week off to lick my wounds. For a nice recap of how awful it was, here's a column by Gazette-Mail statehouse reporter Phil Kabler.
There were many defeats and a few wins, some proactive and some defensive. I haven't got around to making a full list. There were so many bad bills flying around so fast that it felt like we were running in circles, albeit mostly remotely due to COVID.
Working on legislative issues here was never easy, but this session makes all the others seem like a cakewalk. These days a glorious victory often consists of working to make an awful bill a little less bad; killing a bad bill is worthy of an epic like the Iliad; and a proactive win is like winning a lottery or being dealt a royal flush.
A friend reminded me of something I posted here four years ago after the 2017 session ended (at the time I thought that was a rough one. I'd forgotten about it, but I think it still holds:
Mulling over that and other limited victories has led me to formulate a maxim which I plan to copyright:
"Those who minimize hard won but limited victories for social justice tend not to be the people who worked their ass off to win them."
And you can quote me on that.
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