Voting Is At Dire Risk
The election of leaders is a time-honored time when the people decide who will represent them. Once in office, they will work with each other to advance the best ideas of the day. Voting is not yet outlawed but it is being bent to favor White middle-class voters. Voting today is considered as something that should be removed from voters who are not likely to vote for republicans. In short, republicans do not want the poor, the young, the immobile, and people of color to vote. They will make it harder by raising voter identification requirements, reducing the opportunity to vote, removing voting after hours, and making it more difficult to vote by mail. They have done this by passing over 300 new laws in 43 states to bring about restrictions. What was once unthinkable has become the cruel norm.
Republicans are keen to stop parts of the population from voting to remain in power at any cost. It was once unthinkable even in contentious times to alter the sacred nature of voting. Because of the deep polarization of politics, there is no compromise on any issue and the government has ground to a halt. Democrats with the slimmest of majorities are desirous of passing their legislative agenda. Republicans believe their only way to regain power is to stop everything, no matter how cruel, the democrats propose. The republicans are also using the filibuster to stop any legislative maneuvers. There is pressure to remove the archaic tool which was designed to keep the political party in power from tyrannical agendas. In practice it was rarely used as there was the ability to compromise among leaders in kinder times.
The filibuster started as a Jim Crow maneuver to stop anti lynching laws or civil rights laws. There is a growing call among civil rights leaders to do away with the ancient procedure. Why? Because it is holding up the infrastructure bill, and federal remedies to state laws to restricting voting in America.
One thing is for sure, the politics of today is to maintain the current voting system which saw a record number of people vote in the last election. Republicans want to stop the Democrat vote at all costs. Today because of an old Jim Crow procedure, attacks on voting and getting the country back to work are being held up by the minority in the senate because of their loss of power. Another thing is for certain; conservative power brokers do not want black and brown people to vote and that is all this is really about. Register and Vote.
Emergency Rules For Critical Race Theory Rushed Through
You ever wonder why some people push through regulations in an almost reckless manner? It is almost as if they think if it is labeled “emergency” it will keep people from thinking it inane and racist. What else would you call state laws by conservatives designed to stop teaching history that makes conservative children feel bad by teaching them their ancestors were less than savory people. The Oklahoma State Board of Education adopted emergency rules for the coming years to bring the state in compliance with rules that would be written by Jim Crow if he taught history.
HB 1775 prohibits the teaching that one race or sex is superior to another and anyone, because of their race or sex is fundamentally racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. This is Oklahoma’s contribution to republican efforts across the nation to stop teaching the truth about this country. Truths regarding, among other things, slavery, Native American genocide, or stealing Texas from Mexico are among the taboo topics in the Republican agenda. Columbus didn’t discover anything; he was in fact the father of slavery. How did the United States pay for the Louisiana Purchase when as many as a million native Americans already lived there? You get the picture. Oh, what about the Osage Reign of Terror (when Osages were married and murdered for their mineral rights), and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre? Will it be taught?
The emergency rules are really for violations to the embarrassing law. Failure to comply with HB 1775 state that “at a minimum” the accreditation status of the offending school will be downgraded to “Accredited with Deficiency.” The school teaching the truth will be given one year to correct their sins. So, in this era of Orwellian revisionist history or glaring evasion of the facts, schools and especially teachers are in fear for their professional lives.
More permanent rules will be worked on in the Fall where no doubt the penalties for telling the truth will be more strident. All of this is the opposite of teaching and while sometimes hard to swallow is important for students to learn. If it’s alright for black and brown children to live in terror for generations, white students can at least hear it taught what their ancestors did.
Stitt Forum To Generate Anti Indian Sentiment Over McGirt Fails
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has been at odds with Oklahoma tribes from the day he took office. First, he tried to bully them into renegotiating gaming compacts to receive more money for the state and now he is trying to raise negative sentiments against tribes after the United States Supreme Court said the sovereign jurisdiction of the Muscogee Creek Nation was unlawfully abolished. It has in effect returned jurisdiction back to the tribes in what is Eastern Oklahoma.
Because it has thrown out many criminal cases for wrongful prosecution, the Federal government is picking up the major cases and tribes are handling many of the lessor cases. In some cases, the charges are dropped. In reality, the state is angry at the loss of control of much of Eastern Oklahoma and most of Tulsa. While it is labelled a jurisdictional issue, it is really a race issue.
Stitt organized a forum along with some affected district attorneys to hear handpicked witnesses discuss how traumatic the McGirt decision has been on their lives. Since the state has already lost the case in the Supreme court, they can’t relitigate it and are now trying to get congress to come up with a remedy by making the case for giving the state criminal jurisdiction back.
By the way, tribes were not invited to sit on the panel or give testimony. This angered many in Indian country and they flooded the hall at the Cox business center and shouted down every speaker causing organizers to cut short the forum.
There are plenty of reasons to work together with the tribes, but bullying is neither right nor effective.
