An African-American man in his seventies was pushed in his wheelchair into an auxiliary building owned by the New Birth Baptist Church in the Little Haiti section of Miami on June 13 seeking to become a full citizen of the United States. This building was not an immigration office but rather a workshop put together by Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson to help ex-offenders regain their voting rights. This particular ex-offender had one felony conviction from the 1990s and a 2010 letter from the Florida Parole Commission saying that his application was in the process. He had received no follow up since that 2010 letter.
This gentleman was amongst the dozens of other ex-offenders in the room who were waiting in line to see Florida Rights Restoration Coalition President, Desmond Meade, and others to get to see how they could get their voting rights restored. After paying their debt to society, they were still deprived of full citizenship. Full citizens have the right to vote. Another man told the story of having gone back to school at a local university and gotten a degree. He was now married and living a productive life but still does not have the right to vote. The sad fact is that there are over one million former felons in Florida who are disenfranchised The majority of the felony convictions are related to drugs.
If you are ever convicted of a felony in the state of Florida then you might as well change your name to Dred Scott because when it comes to voting you have no rights that the state is bound to respect. The arduous process of getting the right to vote restored is often littered with delays and follow up that is sporadic if an ex-offender is fortunate enough to get any at all. This discourages many ex-offenders from even beginning the process. Laws such as these are evidence of the irrationality that often accompanies public policymaking.
This type of legislation exposes a severe empathy deficit amongst a segment of lawmakers. Empathy involves having compassion for the plight of other people whose experience does not mirror their own. Whether this is the person who does not have access to adequate healthcare, the person of Islamic faith who is unfairly stereotyped as being Anti-American, the undocumented worker who is doing his or her best to make a better way of life for their family, or the disenfranchised felon who still can't vote despite having paid their debt to society. We should be empathetic towards their plight and do what we can to improve their circumstances.
The former felons that gathered in Little Haiti on June 13 weren't there seeking a tax break or an economic bailout but simply access to the ballot box. How long is a person supposed to be denied their basic civil rights after they have already completed their sentence? Jackie Robinson's quote that "the right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time" is as applicable now as it was the day that he said it. It is time for America to live up to the words of the pledge of allegiance that is recited every day in Kindergarten classrooms and be a nation that embodies the notion of liberty and justice for all.
Follow Marcus Bright on Twitter: www.twitter.com/marcusabright
That's not what empathy means. That's what sympathy means. Empathy means the ability to understand how another person views a situation, but it does not necessarily mean that you have compassion for their plight.
Also, this has to be one of the least important issues out there. These guys were convicted of felonies. Boo hoo that it's hard for them to fill out the paperwork necessary to be able to vote. I'm not a felon, but I have to deal with tons of pain in the butt government bureaucracy all the time (emissions tests for my car, renewing drivers licenses and passports, paying car taxes and property taxes and - the biggest ones of all - filing federal and state income taxes). Why don't guys like Bright ever lobby for the government to reduce the paperwork burden on law-abiding citizens.
These mean people hurt other people and should not have their rights restored unelss their victims are truly whole.
Isn't irony fun....
I am not advocating commission of a felony. However there are so many felonies now that people cannot keep track of them. Did you know that picking up and keeping a bird feather might, just might be a felony. Get the wrong kind of feather and the law assumes you killed the bird, regardless, and punishes you with fines and imprisonment.
Then again, denying the rights of thousands of legitimate citizens the right to vote is not even considered a misdemeanor.
Yes, young people have experimented with drugs in large numbers. Large numbers of them have been convicted, imprisoned, and thrown away. Had we educated them and helped them to find work we would have had a more prosperous society. Instead we sacrificed prosperity to build more prisons and to make private owners of prisons rich.
I believe a federal law is in order, that any criminal who has completed his sentence (imprisonment, probation, etc.) should be not be denied the right to vote on the basis of the past criminal record. Let us make those coming back into the community a true part of our society instead of marginalizing them and excluding them.
Depriving individuals of full citizenship, especially if those individuals are people of color, will continue to guarantee white privilege. We all know the "law" unfairly targets people of color and one of the underlying effect of targeting them and "felonizing" them (to coin a phrase) is disenfranchisement, which is advantageous for white privilege. More importantly, what does it say about the American spirit?
"Laws such as these are evidence of the irrationality that often accompanies public policymaking."
Yes, it is irrational that one who has been convicted of a felony is forced to suffer disenfranchisement, but the policy makers aren't thinking about fairness, they are thinking about guaranteeing the greatest advantages for the continuation of white privilege. The more people who are disenfranchised (especially people of color) the better for the securing of the white agenda.
"It is time for America to live up to the words of the pledge of allegiance..."
It's probably better (especially for people of color) to realize that this pledge is not intended for you (in the mind of white racists that is.).
Personally, I believe activists should mount an aggresive attack on this issue because people should never be continually tortured by wrong decisions they made in the past, especially after they've made restitution for their wrongdoing. Situations like this merely demonstrate how unpatriotic and abusive Americans really are.
They talk out of one side of their mouths about ex-convicts pulling themselves up by their bootstraps; and then cutting off the bootstraps and snatching the boots away from them, if they find a way to succeed in America.
Certain Americans do not want these people to succeed, and they will go to great lengths to make sure that they never do.