Florida Law

In our history – in the history of this great nation there is a memory. It is a memory of a dark and tragic time. It is the memory of the time of slavery.
We can read in our history books about the sin of slavery.
If it was a sin then why did it take so long to quell?
Because the people practicing it believed it was right.
To do this they used a little chicanery. The idea was that men and women taken into bondage deserved it because they had been living a life of crime by living a life outside of our nation.
Their crime – was that they allowed themselves to be captured. After all – if they were meant to be free went the logic – they would have remained free. They became slaves – went the nightmare – so they were meant to be slaves.
Upon this abuse was heaped the horrible idea that it was a sin to be black. Upon this wicked and vile practice was included the abhorrent notion that the sins of the father became the sins of the sons and daughters. There was no escape. The chains that hung upon our bodies were also hung upon our minds.
In point of fact it was sometimes considered a sin to be any color other than white.
During some points in our history it was illegal to be white, yellow, red, brown or black and perform many of the daily duties we take for granted now.
It would be horrendous to imagine this occurring today in the year 2004 in the most enlightened and powerful nation on earth yet this is what is happening.
Slavery was bonded servitude. The slaves were kept in bondage against a sin they did not commit and yet the states – most of them – recognized a freed slave as having been freed from bondage. In Florida a law was written following the Civil War which disbarred freed men from voting. It was written as barring freed felons from voting – but it was used to disallow freed slaves of any color from the vote.
In 2004 the laws are being used to cut names from the voter rolls in Florida by using a system that is shot through with corruption. The law is being used to compare a list of felon names with a list of voters who have never been in jail. The criteria being used for the decision is loose to say the least – middle initial, state of birth, first name (beyond first four letters) and even ‘release date’ do not need to match in order for the voter’s name to be stricken from the record.
It’s one thing for Jeb Bush to get on the nightly news and crow about how he has saved so many lives in Florida by shouting ‘Run!’ every time a hurricane blows through. It is quite another for him to revive Jim Crow (so called after a black character in minstrel shows) and gnaw at the base of liberties and the right and true freedom guaranteed to us all.
In our history there is also bright light. Let us let that light shine forth again on this continent so that we can declare to the world in action what we have cried out with words – that all men are created equal.
Why tolerate election fraud of any kind?