The worst damage from deception comes from truth that is slightly twisted.
Thousands of us in Big Horn County will line up to vote in the midterm elections. Across the nation, hundreds of thousands will have more difficulty casting their ballots than they did two years ago. Why? Because powerful people don’t want them to vote. Of course, new voter ID laws do make the possibility of voter fraud slightly more difficult. But that truth is twisted around to cover the big lie. The true motive of powerful out-of-state people backing LR126 (on the ballot in Big Horn County) is to move away, not toward, the principles of democracy in our Constitution.
Our nation was founded on the principle of “one man, one vote.” At that time, John Adams and others meant a vote for rich (or at least financially self-sufficient), white men, only. Yet, our constitution did vest power with people instead of with wealth (especially royalty in England). More importantly, our constitution was designed primarily to limit the power of a few over many. That American experiment, however limited, set in motion amazing changes here that other nations’ kings and rulers watched in alarm.
It took a while to expand our nation’s concept of who should vote. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. This was quickly followed by successful efforts to limit the power of former slaves, including rights to own property, to obtain an education (now considered a property right), and to vote.
Equal access to voting rights in the United States has been a long and hard won crusade for many groups of people. In Montana, our own Jeanette Rankin led a coalition eventually giving suffrage (voting and office holding) rights to women. Her efforts to expand these voting rights to sharecroppers and blacks were frustrated. Most southern states refused the new public school laws, citing Black inferior intellectual ability. But the struggle went on.
Then came the freedom schools in the South in the sixties. Black people learned our Constitution, found how to register to vote and filled out the papers. Many overcame the grueling obstacles to running for public office and to accessing polling places. This was not an easy feat, as the voting process was set up, then, for the purpose of discouraging the Black vote.
American Indians faced similar obstacles. As recently as 2003, the right to citizenship of the Tohono O’odham tribe in Topawa, AZ was being questioned. Tribal elders told me about their reluctance to protest the practice bombing raids that were being conducted by the US military on their village. These raids caused windows to break and livestock to abort . Yet, the people were fearful of speaking out, lest their citizenship be revoked. Arizona politicians, knowing the Indian vote bends Democratic, argued that because many of their relatives live across the border in Mexico, the Tohono are not really US citizens. As the tribal elders said to me, “We won’t risk our hard-won rights to citizenship in this great country.”
The seeds for democracy planted in our constitution should not be taken lightly. The “blessings of liberty” are precious indeed to many peoples rendered powerless through circumstance of birth or heritage. Our definition of access and fairness has rightly expanded over time. Now we believe that even women, minorities, and those living in poverty should have access to the wealth created by their own labor. They should be able to reap from the ground on which they live and to access the legal protections we all enjoy.
Now for the first time since our nation was founded we are backing down on these voting rights. We are creating excuses to whittle away at people’s basic rights in order to engineer election outcomes. States are redistricting and putting in all sorts of barriers to keep certain people from voting, with legislation written and disinformation funded by powerful interests fearful of losing their power. This is the opposite of getting out the vote campaigns. Once again, like in the 60’s, it takes vigilance to vote if one is poor. Be organized, plan ahead, work the right kinds of hours or don’t vote. This change is connected with a recent surge in virtual slavery in America (Michelle Anderson, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness).
Will we rescind our status as the world’s beacon for democracy, under pressure from the American Legislative Exchange Council and other so-called “conservative” new royalists? Here in Montana, even in Big Horn County, we have been deluged with their propaganda. Do we believe voter registration will somehow improve our voting process for Democracy? Research proves otherwise. It only serves the elites’ purpose of suppressing votes of the poor and less powerful. So, when we cast our vote on LR 126, let’s carefully consider what we’re really choosing. Do we value expediency over fairness or do we value equal access to civil rights over the power of wealth?
http://sojo.net/magazine/login?nid=60071 November, 2014
“How to Suppress the Vote”
by Bob Smietana IN THIS YEAR'S midterm elections, hundreds of thousands of Americans will have a much more difficult time casting their ballots than they did two years ago. And it won’t be because of rain, or early winter snows, or other acts of God. It will be because powerful people don’t want them to vote. Why? They stand to gain politically if the “wrong” people can be kept away from the polls. It’s the opposite of a “get out the vote” campaign—“keep out the vote” describes it better.
http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/truth-about-voter-fraud
Michelle Anderson, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431
Have felons been proliferating at a rate we are afraid might dilute the rational vote of the rest of us? We should start looking at our felon factories. If this scares us to the point we want to deprive them of citizenship, we should ask what’s really happening and why, with a little scientific research. “Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action.” From Amazon’s reviews.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex
“The term "prison–industrial complex" (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services…”
David Graber
Hardin, MT
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