Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 11-13-20

Political
How Stacey Abrams, LaTosha Brown
VP-Elect Kamala Harris Praises 'Generations Of Women' Who Paved The Way For Her Historic Accession
And Other Black Women Changed
The Course Of The 2020 Election
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities,” Said Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in the victory cele- bration for her and now President-elect Joe Biden.
“And to the children of our country, regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message: Dream with ambition, lead with con- viction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before. And we will applaud you every step of the way,” she added before introducing the next Com- mander-in-chief.
In his own speech, Biden said that he “would have the honor of serving with a fan- tastic Vice President” in Harris
In a white suit in a clear homage to the suffragettes who fought to get women the right to vote, Harris never once mention Donald Trump by name, but instead
As the 2020 presidential election comes down to the wire, it’s clear that Black women continue to be the Dem- ocratic Party’s most powerful voting group.
Not only did 91% of Black women vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden according to NBC News exit poll results, but Black women have also been on the front lines of this year’s elec- tion, working to ensure that all eligible voters have their voices heard at the polls.
In Georgia, Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of the state in 2018, has been on the ground to ensure that voter suppression does not dictate the outcome of this year’s elec- tion. Two years ago, she lost the gubernatorial race by less than 55,000 votes to Georgia’s now- governor Republican Brian Kemp amid reports of voter suppression in the state. Be- tween 2010 and 2018, it’s re- ported that Kemp, who served as Georgia’s secretary of state during that time, purged up- wards of 1.4 million voters from the rolls, with many voter regis- trations being cancelled be- cause a person did not vote in the previous election. Addition- ally, in 2018, 53,000 people had their registrations moved to “pending” because of the state’s “exact match” law, which re- quires handwritten voter regis- trations to be identical to an individual’s personal docu- ments, The Atlantic reported. Of those 53,000, more than 80% of those registrations be- longed to Black voters.
In a 2019 Vogue profile ti- tled, “Can Stacey Abrams Save American Democracy?” Abrams told the magazine that after her 2018 loss she “sat shiva for 10 days” and then she “started plotting.”
Part of that plotting con- sisted of her starting a voting rights organization called Fair Fight, which continued and ex- panded the work of the New Georgia Project she started at the end of 2013 that focused ex- clusively on increasing voter registration. This time, with
STACEY ABRAMS
Fair Fight, Abrams and her
team focused on increasing voter participation, as well as education about elections and voter rights.
As a result of these efforts, it’s estimated that more than 800,000 new people have reg- istered to vote in Georgia since 2018, with Abrams telling NPR that 45% of these new vot- ers are under the age of 30 and 49% are people of color. In ad- dition, Abrams tells NPR that she and her team were able to get rid of the “exact match” pol- icy before the 2020 election.
Similar to Abrams, LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund which works to increase voter registration and turnout and expand voting rights policies, used an election loss to fuel her desire to create change. In 1998, Brown ran for State Board of Education in Al- abama’s 5th district against in- cumbent Democrat Willie Paul. It was her first time run- ning for office, and Brown tells CNBC Make It that the race was so close that it took seven days for the winner to be announced, with Brown losing by a little over 200 votes. Minutes after the election was certified, she said she received a call from the state’s Democratic Party letting her know that 800 ballots had been found in a safe by the county sheriff. Brown says she was told that it was too late for the ballots to be counted. To fix the issue, she says she was told that she could seek legal action, but as a grassroots candidate, Brown says she didn’t have the money to do so.
KAMALA HARRIS
praised voters for “ushering in a new day for america.” Making history as both the first woman to serve in the highest offices in the land and the first person of color to be veep, Harris will be the 49th VPOTUS – a role that she said she draws inspi- ration from Biden’s role as Barack Obama’s VP.
Recognizing her barrier breaking role, Harris praised “women who sacri- ficed so much for equality and liberty” in America. “The generations of women, Black
women, Asian, White, Latina, Native American women who throughout our nation’s his- tory have paved the way for this moment tonight.” The daughter who was raised with her sister by their In- dian immigrant single mother, Harris also dis- tinctly turned a spotlight on “the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democ- racy.”
“I stand on their shoul- ders.”
Trump’s Evangelical Adviser, Bishop Harry Jackson Jr., Has Died At 66
Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr, the senior pastor at Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, was a conservative prison reform advocate.
Bishop Harry Jackson Jr., an evangelical advisor to President Donald Trump and senior pastor at Hope Chris- tian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, died Monday at 66.
The church released a statement after his death, say- ing, “It is with a heavy heart that we notify you that our beloved Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr. has transi- tioned to be with the Lord on November 9, 2020.”
Bishop Harry Jackson Jr., an evangelical advisor to Presi- dent Donald Trump and senior pastor at Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, died Monday. He was 66.
Jackson was conservative, vehemently pro-life and against same-sex marriage. Though he aligned with the Republican Party in these ways, he was also a prison re- form advocate.
White House gathering in April, Trump referred to Jackson as “a highly re- spected gentleman who is a member of our faith and a person that we have tremen- dous respect for.”
tion. He was also present at the White House garden party in which Amy Coney Bar- rett’s appointment to the Supreme Court was an- nounced. The event was deemed a coronavirus super- spreader event by infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
While introducing him at a
Jackson attended Trump’s speech at this year’s Republican National Conven-
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