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accurate execution and counts for the elections of 2020 and 2021.
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Your voter suppression bill makes it even more urgent for a renewed national Voting Rights Act to save democracy for us all. More urgent for businesses big and small to join the outcry against your actions. There will be economic and other consequences. And we will work even harder to ensure that every eligible voter can vote!
Senate Bill 202 hampers democracy and makes it more difficult for people to exercise their constitutional rights to vote for the candidates they choose. You call it “election reform” when what the bill does is indeed everything Republicans purport to stand against – the removal of local control and undermining the will of the people.
While there are many issues with the bill, below are some of the most egregious attacks against our participatory democracy: 1. The takeover of the State Election Board, kneecapping the duly elected secretary of state. 2. The takeover of the secretary of state’s office, allowing the state legislature to direct control over the SOS’s employees. 3. The takeover of local county
elections offices, robbing county leaders and county elections boards of a say in their own processes. 4. Curtailing access to voting by absentee ballot by 40 percent, which impacts every Georgia voter. 5. Blocking corporations, athletes, nonprofit organizations and others from a public-private-partnership with county elections offices to increase early voting sites, provide snacks for voters waiting in long lines and other pro-democracy efforts to ensure equitable, convenient access to the ballot box.
These laws hurt every Georgia voter but they especially target the voting power of Black and Brown people and working-class voters who made the difference in the 2020 General Election and 2021 Runoff. Those who were given a provisional ballot at 6 p.m. and were able to “cure” their vote by the deadline. Those who were able to use a secure drop box located outside their place of employment. Those who were able to vote outside their senior center, saving them the trouble of waiting for a paratransit ride. Those in lower-income communities who lack “common” forms of ID but had proved themselves eligible otherwise.
Most disturbing are the legislative changes that vest power in the majority party – currently the GOP – to overturn and change the outcome of future elections. You have weighted your bill with partisanship by removing the elected Secretary of State as chair of the elections process and handing the power to GOP legislators to dismiss civil servant election officials and replace them with your appointees. These provisions represent a direct path to corruption
and manipulation of elections.
Today, we call on businesses, citizens, major event planners, and individuals across the nation who champion democracy and inclusion to exercise their right to think carefully about where to make economic investments.
Whether Georgia promotes voting rights or assaults them makes news. We should all care about our state’s reputation. Are we going to be a place where people of all colors, religions, and backgrounds are welcomed to live, visit, do business, and where eligible residents can vote? Or are we to be a backwater state where the Confederacy and all it stood for still holds sway?
Will Georgia be governed by a few white men who in 2021 decided to ignore democracy, roll back civil rights, and cheat the public so they alone could dictate how many eligible voters have access to the ballot box or not? Men who witnessed the signing of a voter suppression bill in the governor’s ceremonial office while a Black woman legislator was denied entry, arrested, and charged with felony crimes for knocking on the door? As Gov. Nathan Deal said in 2016 in vetoing a “religious freedom” bill that would have sanctioned discrimination against gay people: “This is about the character of our State and the character of its people.” That bill had been widely criticized by Big Business and the entertainment industry, and it set off alarm bells that such legislation would harm our state’s economy.
We call now for the same kind of outcry. This bill not only harms Georgia voters but also could have a similar economic impact as the religious freedom bill would have had. Big and small businesses are at risk of carrying the brunt of economic responses
events, family reunions and more by people incensed by the attempt to suppress fair access to the ballot box. Condemnation of your voter suppression bill will be loud and profound from every corner of our state and from those contemplating coming here. Throughout our nation’s history, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, white women, and allies have had to fight against white men to enjoy rights granted to all citizens under the Constitution. Fight against a class of men who have acted as if these rights are theirs alone. Coalition of Black Leaders calls for Who treat “rights” as a “privilege” doled out in dribs and drabs only widespread condemnation of Georgia’s to be snatched back when the tent begins to expand.new Voter Suppression Law Free and fair access to the ballot box leaves the choice up to all of us. Our state and our nation grow stronger when it is easy for every eligible voter to freely engage in the political process. You should join us in standing on the side of democracy, freedom, fairness, and inclusion. We call on you to put forth an agenda that serves all the people – regardless of race, income or party affiliation. Earn votes in the manner required by the Constitution. As history has shown through the bravery and determination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Congressman John Lewis, and other civil rights heroes, voter including cancellation of conven- suppression is not a winning stratT:5" tions, entertainment and sporting egy.
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THE LAST WORD
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux
The previous President, also known as 45, or the Orange Man, or the Nutty Narcissist; kept our nation with his insanity for more than four years.
President Biden is best advised to ignore his predecessor and should not even stoop to mention his name.
Why not? The nation, even his rabid supporters, knows the former was out of line, out of order, and out of control. He is also desperate for the attention that even his Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) sycophants could not offer.
Reality can be grating, especially when someone accustomed to adulation finds the applause tepid, the plane out of order, the taxes under review, and more. President Biden gave the former too much air in even mentioning his name at his March 25 press conference.
The press behaved as badly as President Biden. They focused on immigration, a Republican talking point that invokes the former, instead of concentrating on COVID and vaccinations, about which most Americans care.
Not one question about COVID? Who are these press members, and what is wrong with them? If you polled people, the pandemic would rank much higher on a priority scale than immigration.
But like sharks smelling blood in the water, or a possible Biden weakness, they surrounded and pounced (or whatever sharks do).
Meanwhile, several topics got short shrift in the hourlong press conference. The President likened the filibuster to Jim Crow law, but he shillyshallied around what he will do about it.
President Biden, you have condemned racism, discrimination, and Jim
Crow in the past. Why can’t you come out more forcefully against the filibuster?
You’ve had strong words about the new voter-suppressing Georgia laws. Why won’t you commit to federal action to ensure that we all have the right to vote?
Are you expecting a message in a bottle? Georgia Republicans seem to think that voting activists can send them. Otherwise, why would they make it illegal for peop-
le to offer a simple, humane gesture to people who have been standing in line for hours, a bottle of water?
What could be more benign than handing someone standing in line for hours a bottle of water and a bag of chips or an apple?
If President Biden got a message from a bottle I handed him, it would say, be firm, be firm. This racist attack on our democracy must not be tolerated.
We must consider President Biden’s point about timing. He knows the Senate better most, knows his former colleagues well enough to know their sensibilities. But he must also understand the nature of racist intransigence.
Many Senate Republicans have chosen partisanship and obstruction over integrity and decency. Few of them are willing to retreat from their line in the sand.
President Biden must understand, though, that he would not be our nation’s elected leader if the laws that Georgia just passed existed in November 2020 or January 2021.
There would be no Senators Warnock and Ossoff, no Georgia electoral votes, no democracy. Instead, there would have been the continuation of anarchy with the former resting on his laurels, spewing more lies.
President Biden inherited a mess, no question. Still, he should never refer to the former and the mess he left again. If he were me, he might respond with any questions about the former with a dismissive, “the former is irrelevant.”
The former needs to be treated as such. Whether it is immigration, COVID, the economy, or more, it’s President Biden’s ball of wax now.
Continuing to mention the former gives him light he does not deserve. President Biden, and the rest of us, should keep that name in the dark. He can probably show up on Faux News whenever he wants to, but his rants look more like empty barks when nobody calls his name.
So, President Biden, you’ve been doing rather well in your first two-plus months as President. You’ve got checks in the bank, shots in arms, and shelter for children at the border. You have infrastructure plans but must stand more firmly against efforts to erode our democracy.
And it would be best if you did not refer to your predecessor as anything but “the former.” Nor should the rest of us ever utter the former’s name. We must move forward and leave the devil in the dark.
President Joe Biden
Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, media contributor and educator. Her latest project MALVEAUX! On UDCTV is available on youtube. com. For booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www.juliannemalveaux.com.
Filibusters Ain’t Funny!
QUIT PLAYIN’
By Vincent L. Hall
President Barack Obama was primed, passionate, and personal as he delivered words of comfort and discomfort during a tribute to the late Rep. John Lewis.
“O” minced no words.
The U.S. Senate needed to retire the filibuster. It has been used as a tool to stifle civil rights’ forward progress at every significant turn.
The filibuster question has become paramount afresh as this nation seated an equal number of Democrats and Republicans during the most politically-polarized period in our history.
President Joe Biden needs to lean toward the filibuster’s demise if he is to have any real success.
Gil Scott Heron, the original Black rapper, understood that you must challenge every rule and law to stage a revolution. Heron ridiculed the Negro leadership of his time by saying that they were not ready for “the revolution.” He reminded us that you don’t yield to stop signs or traffic signals during a revolution.
Biden promised to pass turnkey legislation on immigration, expand voting rights, green initiatives, and infrastructure enhancements. He will need to run the Republican red light, known to us as the filibuster.
A feistier, less congenial Obama laid it out in a July 30, 2020 article in Vox Magazine.
“Obama called for legislation restoring the Voting Rights Act, much of which was gutted by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Abbott v. Perez (2018). He also endorsed other democratic reforms, including an end to partisan gerrymandering, extending statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, and making Election Day a national holiday.
And then, he called upon the Senate to remove an obstacle that has consistently stood in the way of civil rights legislation throughout American history.
‘If all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do,’ said Obama.
The filibuster typically allows a bloc of 41 senators to prevent legislation from passing, and Republican filibusters stymied much of Obama’s policy agenda during his presidency.”
If Joe Biden does not kill the filibuster, he too will see many of his initiatives and appointments die in the well of the Senate. Old school racists like Strom Thurmond, who made the process famous, have either gone to heaven or hell. However, the spirit of White privilege and resistance is alive, well, kicking ass and taking names.
Thurmond’s historic filibustering of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 lasted from August 28, 1957, at 8:54 p.m. until 9:12 p.m. the following night. His preparation for the 24-hour assault on civil rights was as sinister and situated as the resolve that we see in the GOP today in Georgia and other red states.
Strom took a steam bath earlier in the day to remove excess liquids and to avoid any “accidents.” He stationed one staffer in the cloakroom with a pail in case of an “emergency evacuation.” Strom, the father of a 32-year-old Black daughter at the time, went to the floor with cough
drops and malted milk tablets. He was thorough in planning the moment.
His Republican comrades would offer short remarks intermittently so that he could scarf down a sandwich or get a second wind. To fill the space, he read each of the 48 states’ voting laws, the U.S. Criminal code, a Supreme Court decision, and various other laws; verbatim.
Twenty-four hours is a long time, so he allowed Majority-Leader, Lyndon Baines Johnson to swear in a new Senator from Wisconsin, talked about jury trials, read the Declaration of Independence, and eventually offered his summation.
“Mr. President, I urge every Member of this body to consider this bill most carefully. I hope the Senate will see fit to kill it. I expect to vote against the bill.”
The Senate reportedly erupted in laughter. However, the point of privilege he seized against democracy was not funny at all.
Thurmond’s and subsequent filibusters are a travesty of justice. Like him, I hope the “Senate will see fit to kill it.”
GA governor office
