With our chanting Reparations 2020 and ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) there’s a revived spirit among Black America that paints a color over this election that I’m invigorated by. We have full sight of our demands in 2020. Now that our generation has reached an age of maturity to not only vote but become well informed, I’m sure that this cycle will be like no other. Finally we millennials have an opportunity to out-vote the generation before us, and not only out-vote them but to also influence our parents and grandparents in a way like never before. We’re well informed and prepared, we’ve been studying our ancestors, we look up to Angela Davis and Assata Shakur. We’ve read thoroughly through Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and and Dr. Francis Chris Wesseling’s The Keys to the Colors. We watch documentaries like Ava DuVernay’s ’13th’ for pleasure. Not only are we old enough to vote, as many of us were not during the last presidential election cycle, but we are also threateningly well-educated and equipped beyond measure. We will not be underestimated during this election.
It’s Time to Earn Our Vote
There’s absolutely no way that any candidate will be able to earn our vote by introducing generalized ‘minority’ benefiting bills. Legislation that does anything less but positively targeting the black community in response to the centuries of genocidal targeting that we have suffered will not receive any of our praise. While reparations have been a unified hashtag, it’s the spirit of the call that fuels of us. We know that billions of dollars in payments to decedents of slaves is considered ‘ambitious’ to the overseers we’ve been seeking benefits from for decades that currently fill legislative seats. However, we also truly know there’s absolutely nothing ambitious about the long overdue demand that was also supported by a United Nations panel in 2016 for centuries of racial terrorism. The spirit behind the hashtag ADOS and Reparations2020 is the overwhelming acknowledgement of our collective power, gratifying pride and embraced history.
Unlike our parents we lack the desire to assimilate into corporate America. We fail to be enticed by a life of being owned for decades with the hope of pursuing our passions once we’re allowed to retire. Our parents made that sacrifice to obtain our education. Now it is our responsibility to pursue our desires. We are responsible to our ancestors to build the business that were burned down in Tesla, Black Bottom and Black Wall Street. We have desires that surpass our own expectations, yet we recognize our capacity as a community to fulfill each one. We are looking for our candidate and none of the heavy promoted choices we’ve seen so far, even attempted to appealed to our call. Candidates are failing because they’re treating us like those generations before us: making broad, vague statements that don’t directly speak to our demands, until now.
Other Candidates Finally Feelin’ the Burn
Now Bernie Sanders has taken the lead in making a clear stance in favor of full enfranchisement nationwide, restoring the voting rights to those impacted by felony disenfranchisement, including men and women in prison. His state, Vermont, along with Maine, are the only two states in which incarcerated citizens never lose their voting rights. Many students, especially on the East Coast have formed grassroots organizations and disinvestment groups urging they’re campuses to stop the exploitation of prison labor by pulling out of the prison industrial slave complex. Many young voters are passionate about seeing a transformation in the way that our criminal justice system operates, we are not pleased with small reforms. We are the ones whose close close relatives and friends were taken away and caged. We became adults in the mass incarceration era and watched our president, the president under which many of us came into adulthood, do nothing retroactive to resolve the issue. Restoring the voting rights of incarcerated citizens isn’t just a vague form of criminal justice reform, it’s a retroactive solution that has a positive impact on the countless lives that were unjustly marginalized by our ‘broken’ criminal justice system. Knowing that, it’s interesting to see that none of the other candidates have voiced their opinions. Sanders has done an incredible job setting himself apart. It’s sad to see that the Democratic African-American candidates can only follow his lead at this point, and still have yet to do so.
During the presidential election, it is the responsibility of the candidates to find a way to set themselves apart. I’m not fully for Sanders, make no mistake about it, however I deeply appreciate the fact that he is making this issue of national importance and is setting it as a priority in his campaign, elevating felony voting rights in election conversations. This is unprecedented. Knowing that felony disenfranchisement in the United States is part of a legacy of racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws that date back to the time of slavery and post-Civil War reconstruction, its important that candidates demonstrate their commitment to unraveling this system. Through racial disparities in our criminal legal system and the over-policing of communities of color, felony disenfranchisement continues to thwart the political power of Black and Brown Americans today. Candidates who refuse to commit to restoring balance are effectively taking a stance against restoring our communities. It’s a blatant Fuck yall.
America has NEVER Been a True Democracy
Nationwide, more than 6 million people are barred from voting because of a felony conviction. This is the new suffrage movement. We are at a sensitive time in our nation’s history where our national democratic institutions are under threat, and the president has the responsibility, especially as our executive head, to prevent the silencing of our incarcerated citizens. For any candidate that has yet to voice their stance on felony disenfranchisement we are waiting and there is a wrong answer. Partial re-enfranchisement is not enough when so many of us are still locked up for marijuana charges, truth-in-sentencing policies and three strike laws. We support the prisoners who risked their lives during the 2018 National Prison Strike to demonstrate the necessity of finally having a true democracy in the United States, “The voting rights of all confined citizens serving prison sentences, pretrial detainees, and so-called “ex-felons” must be counted. Representation is demanded. All voices count!“.
There has never been a time where every citizen in this ‘democracy’ regardless of gender identity, racial background, conviction history or incarceration status has been able to have their voice heard in the legislative processes that govern their lives. 2020 is the time to change that and the candidate that we elect will take that stance, we won’t support anything less.
#DemocracyNeedsEveryone
#FreeTheVote
#Right2Vote
