Page 15 - Florida Sentinel 1-24-20

Feature
Speaker At Heritage Leadership Luncheon Focused On Restoration Of Rights And Voting
BY KENYA WOODARD Sentinel Feature Writer
The passage in 2018 of the State of Florida’s Amend- ment 4 – which restored the right to vote for the formerly incarcerated – was the be- ginning of a journey, not the end of one.
Next up? Getting more people registered to vote, otherwise, “the full impact of the Amendment 4 victory will never be fully realized,” said Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.
Meade made his re- marks last week at the Lead- ership Luncheon, part of a series of events sponsored by the Tampa Bay Heritage Black Heritage Festival. Dozens of people filled the auditorium at the University Area Community Develop- ment Corporation.
Amendment 4’s historical significance cannot be un- derestimated and its passage happened because the votes in support of it were “based on love, forgiveness, and re- demption,” Meade said.
“It was about everyday people who have made mis- takes in our community who deserve second chances,” he said. “For a moment, this country got to see love save the day.”
Amendment 4 granted 1.4 million people with felony convictions the right to vote. But almost immedi- ately after its passage, “we al- lowed ourselves to be drug into the cesspool of partisan politics and division,” Meade said.
change the fees to commu- nity service,” he said.
It’s now the responsibility of advocates to utilize those methods so that “where peo- ple see obstacles, we see op- portunities” and “not grovel at the feet” of politicians, he said.
“We’re not into the beg- ging business,” he said. “We’re commanding.”
Part of that initiative in- cludes getting citizens who already are eligible to vote out to the polls in full force, Meade said.
When now-Sen. Rick Scott was running for his
second gubernatorial term, more than a million people who were eligible to vote did not, he said.
The effects of voting are more important than ever, after the United States’s lat- est flare-up with Iran proved that we’re “just a hair’s breath away from having a world war,” Meade said.
“Hillsborough County alone can determine an elec- tion,” he said. “There are 182,000 unregistered people in Hillsborough County. These people could have an impact on the lives of people all over the world.”
Getting people to the polls will require strong lead- ership from those who can inspire and mentor, Meade said.
“We have to understand what our place is in this fight and we have to have leaders who can lead us out to the promised land,” he said.
DESMOND MEADE ....President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition And one of America’s 100 most influential people named by TIME magazine in 2019
At issue was whether all fines and fees associated with those convictions had to be paid before voting rights could be restored.
Last summer, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill from the Republican-led Legisla- ture that required the for- merly incarcerated to pay all fines before they could be el- igible to cast a vote.
Proponents of Amendment argued that the repayment was essentially a poll tax. Civil rights groups filed suits against the state, calling the law “unconstitu- tional”. After months of re- view, last week the Florida Supreme Court sided with DeSantis.
Meade said he’s always understood that fines are connected to a sentence. However, there are “avenues of relief” by which formerly incarcerated citizens can have their fines alleviated.
“That includes requesting a judge reopen a case to modify the sentence and
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