Left: Bruce Bartman gets probation for two felony counts after casting a ballot for Trump using his dead mother's name.
Right: Crystal Mason, a mother, gets 5 years in prison for voting as herself while not knowing she'd been disenfranchised due to a past felony conviction.
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“There is not systemic racism in America," Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said.
Meanwhile, 16% of Black residents in his state are, like Crystal Mason in Texas, disenfranchised due to an 1890 Jim Crow felony voting law. mississippifreepress.org/11705/systemic…
The total number of Black Mississippians who are disenfranchised due to the felony voting law—130,000—is 3x as large as the margin by which Tate Reeves, a Republican, beat Democrat Jim Hood in the 2019 governor's race. mississippifreepress.org/11705/systemic…
Felony disenfranchisement and cases like Crystal Mason's are among millions of examples of the fact that it is utter bullshit for anyone to deny the reality of systemic racism in America.
TV hosts, before you interview a politician who supports bullying bills targeting trans kids and athletes, please inform yourselves about how hormone replacement therapy works so you can explain it to your audience when the bigot yammers about "biological males in girls' sports."
Folks hear them say, "Boys are physically stronger than girls & it'd be unfair for a trans girl with male strength to compete against girls" and think that makes sense.
But after a year of hormone replacement therapy, trans girls' strength is roughly the same as any other girl.
I've seen some TV hosts get fiery hot and passionate while defending trans kids on the basis that it is unfair to discriminate against them and target them.
But you ought to also be explaining that trans girls don't generally actually have "biological male" strength.
To say systemic racism doesn't exist is to say that Black Mississippians have 3x higher poverty rates than white Mississippians because of some inherent flaw, such as less talent, skill, intelligence or ambition.
To say systemic racism doesn't exist implies that only racial differences in intelligence can explain why children in predominantly Black Mississippi schools have much worse academic outcomes than those in predominantly white ones.
The Lede: "On the penultimate day of the Confederate Heritage Month he proclaimed for the second year in a row, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves made a bold declaration: 'There is not systemic racism in America.'" •2 mississippifreepress.org/11705/systemic…
The announcement could come as a relief to the 38% of Mississippians who are Black. But around 16% of them won't have the opportunity to express their gratitude to the governor; they're systematically disenfranchised due to an 1890 Jim Crow law. •3 mississippifreepress.org/11705/systemic…
NEW: “This verdict is just, but it is not justice. Justice restores and repairs. No action can restore the life of our brother George Floyd to his family and community."
“So we are grateful for the statement that this verdict makes to those who seek to kill us and deny us humanity, but we are still grieving that it came at the cost of the life of a father, brother, son, and friend."
—Jackson Mayor @ChokweALumumba mississippifreepress.org/11465/the-verd…
I lost my white brother to police brutality when I was 14-years-old.
I am goddamn tired of people who don't give a single damn about victims like him pretending they care about white victims of police brutality just long enough to distract from Black victims like George Floyd.
White supremacy has always been willing to sacrifice white lives.
Rep. JH McGehee, arguing for Mississippi's Jim Crow constitution, said he'd do "anything" to "insure white supremacy...even if it does sacrifice some of my white children or my white neighbors or their children."
So don't bother pretending you give a damn about white victims of police.
Black people make up 13% of the country, yet are 24% of police brutality victims.
That's why there's a willingness to sacrifice so many white lives to this system: because Black people get hurt worse.
Making it so that student IDs don't count as valid forms of ID is clearly designed to make it harder for "woke college students" (as Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson described them) to vote.
A two party democracy, but one party is on a national anti-democracy binge.
Republican Reps. Jansen Owen and Kent McCarty and joined Democratic Rep. Shanda Yates in attempting to pass a law creating no-excuse in-person absentee voting in Mississippi during the pandemic.