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Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Ida Wells, Fannie Lou Hamers still rising from US Deep South—Hon. Stacey Abrams: “sacred right” of citizenry

Voting Rights shall not be abridged or denied
Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Fannie Lou Hamer
1917-1977
Voting Rights Champion
1962 -
Leader, Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party
Background: Rep. Abrams

H
ouse Minority Leader for the Georgia General Assembly and State Representative for the 89th House District, Stacey Y. Abrams is the first woman to lead either major political party in the Georgia General Assembly and the first Black American to lead in the House of Representatives. She has been recognized nationally by Governing magazine as one of ‘12 Rising Legislators to Watch’, by Georgia Trend (2012, 2013, 2014) as one of the ‘100 Most Influential Georgians’, and by EMILY’s List (2014) as the inaugural recipient of the Gabrielle Giffords ‘Rising Star Award’.

Georgia politician
Hon. Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Next Generation Fellow of the American Assembly at Columbia University on U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions, an American Marshall Memorial Fellow, an American Council of Young Political Leaders Fellow, a Council on Italy Fellow, a British-American Project Fellow, a Salzburg Seminar – Freeman Fellow on U.S.-East Asian Relations and a Salzburg Seminar Fellow on youth and civic engagement.

Abrams took her academic credentials at Yale Law School (.JD); LBJ School of Public Affairs (University of Texas-Austin, Masters of Public Affairs in public policy); and Spelman College-Atlanta (Bachelor of Arts degree, Interdisciplinary Studies: Political Science, Economics, Sociology). Stacey Y. Abrams is an American civic leader, politician, business owner, initiator, and public servant.  She is founder of The New Georgia Project.
Woman
Suffragist
through 1920


Ida B. Wells
1862-1931
Mississippi to Tennessee
to Illinois
Teacher, Journalist,
Rights Activist;
Woman Suffragist
through 1920
Representative Abrams speaking today on Democracy Now

Stacey Abrams said she founded The New Georgia Project as an offshoot of a nonprofit organization she had launched 16 years ago. Last year, in the course of conducting an investigation concerning the Affordable Care Act in southwest Georgia, the group found that many people had no health coverage and also a large majority of these citizens were not registered to vote.

A
s the Project delved into the voter registration issue and the larger issue of “civic engagement,” Abrams said, they realized that “more 800,000” of Georgia’s “unregistered African-American, Latino and Asian voters …needed to be registered.” And in 145 days and visits to 151 of 159 Georgia counties, the New Georgia Project “collected registration forms from 146 counties” and secured registrations of “more than 86,000 people.”


Rights now Challenged

In the course of their work, Abrams said, the Project found “deep flaws embedded in our [electoral] system” and dark deeds surrounding it.  

I
n the state of Georgia, she said, the Office of the Secretary of State has “unfettered power to make decisions that negatively affect voters.” Moreover, she says, as others have said, that “a system called the ‘Interstate Crosscheck’ is being used by this Secretary of State (as in other states) “without notifying the Legislature.”

Decisions taken that purge hundreds of thousands of citizens from voter rolls “are deeply problematic,” she says, but the examples of rights infringement also bring to light the greater need:

…to better define and control the voting system – because the right to vote is a sacred and basic right of people in a democracy.
 

What’s the citizen to do today?

Go to the polls – “whether you have received your precinct card or not, whether you have information or not,” Georgia State Representative Abrams says.

“Go vote …. Show up.”



Sources and notes

Hon. Stacey Abrams, Georgia State Rep., grew up in Mississippi and a Georgian since 1989, http://staceyabrams.com/
Also at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Abrams
http://www.house.ga.gov/representatives/en-US/Member.aspx?Member=58

“‘40,000 Voters Missing in Georgia’ (?) After Registration Drive in Areas of Color, Names Left off Rolls,” November 4, 2014,
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/4/40_000_voters_missing_in_georgia

Also: “New Voter Suppression Laws Could Decide Key Races, and Turn Back the Clocks for Years to Come,” Tuesday, November 4, 2014 FULL SHOW | HEADLINES | NEXT: “The Priciest Midterms Ever, Brought to you by ‘Dark...,’” http://www.democracynow.org/

A
lso on Interstate Crosscheck

Greg Palast: “Look up your Name on the Crosscheck Voter Purge-List” Thursday, October 30, 2014, by Greg Palast, http://www.gregpalast.com/look-up-your-name-on-the-crosscheck-voter-purge-list/

The Palast team has ripped the lid off ‘Interstate Crosscheck’ – a system used by 27 states, almost all under Republican control, which claims to find illegal ‘double voters,’ those who vote in the same election in two different states.

It took us months, but we got our hands on 2.1 million of the names of the so-called ‘double voters’ accused by Crosscheck. [Greg Palast]


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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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