Jim Crow-era Voter Suppression in Georgia
by The Evil Overlady
It has been very nearly 156 years since the end of the United States Civil War (it effectively ended with Lee’s surrender to Grant at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, so that anniversary arrives in just a few days) and 56 years since the Voting Rights Act came into law on August 6, 1965. Both had not a little connection to ingrained prejudice, systemic exploitation, and disenfranchisement of People of Color. Both involved the deaths of many people of all races, creeds, and genders.
I find it very interesting that those auspicious events occurred almost one hundred years apart.
The South has long refused to admit the end of what they prefer to refer as “The War of Northern Aggression” and have merely awaited their next chance to put Whites on a “Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others” political and societal footing.
I doubt this surprises anyone who possesses even half a brain.
And now, coming as no real surprise, as of March 25, 2021, the State of Georgia has enacted a new law that will once again work to disenfranchise and exploit People of Color all over again in a vile return to Jim Crow style election laws. It goes so far as to allow the majority political Party to overturn election results and even, in a move that can only be seen as being draconian, making it illegal to provide food and water to those who wait in line to participate in their legal Right to vote!
These assholes do not even try to cover up their racism any longer.
The room in which Georgia’s current governor, Brian Kemp, features a portrait of a Georgia slave plantation placed directly behind where he sat while he signed it whilst surrounded by a group of all-White men.
It would not at all surprise me if these assholes would embrace the return of actual slavery to their State, if not to the United States as a whole. They want to return to those antebellum days of wealth and relative ease with others whom they deem unworthy to vote doing all the grunt work.
I can only hope that the Supreme Court of the United States steps in and invalidates this vicious and patently racist law as a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Please let them act quickly on doing so. It cannot be allowed to stand.
Any law that enables the majority political party to overturn the vote of the people is unconstitutional and not the voice of a democracy. Not allowing the distribution of snacks or water is petty, but currently could be justified as a health matter due to the COVID pandemic. Writing it into a law and making it a permanent provision is petty. What is the purpose? No one nowdays is going to change their vote and vote for the party that gave them a bottle of water. Not even in Georgia.
That IS Georgia. It goes by the letter of the law, not the spirit of the times. That it can so quickly move to make law Republican friendly this way is a sad reality. 🙁