this gathering was organized by Karen Dahl.
for more information contact Jack Degnan
email: jdegnan@centurytel.net.

I was disappointed, however, at the absence of political content, especially in this week of a presidential inauguration, the star of which won his position by halting the votes of many African Americans in Florida.

In a nation founded under slavery and living under Jim Crow for 100 years after slavery was abolished, this breach of democracy grows more shocking in context.

A recent issue of the Guardian Weekly from London drew the parallel between disenfranchisements of African Americans with lynchings and guns in the last century and disenfranchisement with faulty voting machines and felon charges in this century.

“What is the difference?” this journalist asked.

At the end of the 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court legitimized Jim Crow by legalizing segregation in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, a travesty against democracy that was not overturned for more than 50 years.

Is it ironic, or consistent, that at the beginning of the 21st century, the U.S. Supreme Court should legalize the dismissal of what has been estimated at 10,000 or more African American votes.

A recent article in the Pioneer Press (“Felonious Intent” by Farai Chideya, Jan 18) states that 8,000 were excluded as felons “who had committed no such crimes.”

It was in his commitment to eradicate such discriminatory laws and practices that Dr. Martin Luther King gave his life.

An essential lesson he taught us is that what is legal is not necessarily what is moral, a truism that nations historically and currently continue to prove.

Chideya writes, in the above-mentioned article, that “equal access to the ballot was a cornerstone of the civil rights movement nearly a half century ago… and remains a critical issue today.”