Voting Rights shall not be abridged or denied
Editing by Carolyn Bennett
 |
| Fannie Lou Hamer 1917-1977Voting 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 Suffragistthrough 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]
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
__________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment