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Rep. Val Demings

@RepValDemings

27 May

Do not claim to support the police and then vote against the January 6th Commission. Just don’t.

"We have heard all of this support for police, police, police, and then your own police force is battered and bruised and now you drag your feet?" said one officer. cnn.com/2021/05/27/pol…

“I kind of got lulled, I got fooled, I listened to (Senate Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell's words that same night when they reconvened (on January 6),” the officer said. “I bought into it, I thought, ‘Wow, we are really going to get some answers.’”

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Rep. Val Demings

@RepValDemings

1 Mar

In the late 1600s or early 1700s, a man was enslaved and brought to Boston. He was renamed Onesimus, meaning "useful, helpful, or profitable." We do not know his real name.

He would become one of the most important figures in American public health. #BlackHistoryMonth

In 1716, he taught Americans something he had learned in Africa: that a small, controlled infection of smallpox could protect from future serious disease. This "inoculation" was the precursor of vaccines.

It was practiced in China, the Middle East, and Africa, but not Europe.

Before its eradication in 1980 (a scientific and medical miracle), Smallpox was a blight on humanity, killing 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence alone, and scarring and blinding survivors.

Read 6 tweets

Rep. Val Demings

@RepValDemings

8 Feb

In spring of 1964, Dr. Robert Hayling, a Black dentist and civil rights leader in St. Augustine, FL, called for college students to come spend their spring breaks not on the beach but at nonviolent civil rights protests.

They came. (Thread) #BlackHistoryMonth

@FAMU_1887

Dr. Hayling had attended @FAMU_1887 & served in the @usairforce.

In 1960, he moved to St. Augustine, which was just a few years from celebrating its "400th anniversary as the nation’s oldest city on an all-white basis."

He advocated for Black residents to be recognized at the anniversary.

In response, he and three others were kidnapped, brought to a Klan rally, beaten, and nearly burned alive.

Klan members fired into his home, killing his dog and just missing his pregnant wife.

Read 11 tweets

Rep. Val Demings

@RepValDemings

7 Feb

This weekend in Winter Park FL, America laid to rest a true hero, Chief Master Sergeant Richard R. Hall Jr.

Chief Master Sergeant Hall was member of the Tuskegee Airmen. He served in World War II and the Korean War, and earned the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

The Tuskegee Airmen were America's first group of Black military airmen and support personnel.

They overcame fear, hardship and prejudice to defend freedom in our hour of need. #BlackHistoryMonth

Chief Master Sergeant Richard R. Hall Jr. was a mechanic for the Tuskegee Airmen, and when asked which planes were his favorite, he would joke "none of them," since every plane that came to him was in need of critical and stressful wartime repair.

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Rep. Val Demings

@RepValDemings

28 Dec 20

Today I'll vote to increase the COVID relief from $600 per person to $2,000 per person.

If it wasn’t for congressional Republicans, Americans would have gotten $2,000 relief checks months ago. They have blocked us at every turn, and they will block this effort too.

I strongly support increasing the emergency relief to $2,000. This infusion of direct assistance would be critical to help my constituents stay in their homes, keep food on the table, and make up for lost ground due to COVID this year.

President Trump could have come out in favor of $2,000 checks during any of the 276 days since he signed the last emergency relief. Instead he decided to golf, watch TV, ignore the negotiations, and let Mitch McConnell take the lead until the last moment.

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Rep. Val Demings

@RepValDemings

2 Nov 20

100 years ago today, Moses Norman, a Black man in Ocoee, Florida, tried to vote.

This challenge to the racial order caused a white mob to lynch voting rights activist July Perry, and with further violence to murder or eventually drive out every other Black resident in the town.

Those who attempted to return faced threats or overt acts of violence, including “dynamite thrown into their homes.”

Their property was seized and sold. One local official, a confederate veteran who had fought to preserve slavery, took ownership of some.

“SPECIAL BARGAINS: Several beautiful little groves belonging to the Negroes that just left Ocoee,” read his advertisement.

Those who excuse today’s inequalities without recognizing our nation’s history of theft and racial violence do a disservice to the truth.

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Rep. Val Demings

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