Hi Everyone,
This listserv has been used to discuss a lot of topics, I
wonder if we could do anything about this situation?
Subject: Louisiana Election Information
Please note the link to the information that many sorors
requested during DDNC in reference to the evacuees in their
cities. This will provide them the information that is
needed, to help them disseminate the procedures to be
followed for evacuee voting from that area.
www.sos.louisiana.gov/elections/elections-index.htm
Secret rolls undermine N. Orleans vote March 7,
2006 BY JESSE JACKSON
Katrina's survivors are about to be brutalized once
more. They withstood the havoc wreaked by the hurricane.
They overcame the failure of national, state and local
officials to provide basic relief in the wake of the storm.
They are struggling to overcome FEMA's failure to provide
for sensible relocation, rebuilding and return. Now
their rights are about to be trampled once more in an
injustice that may finally do more to destroy New Orleans
than the storm did by forcibly disenfranchising the city's
black majority. People of conscience must stand up to stop
this injustice. New Orleans is now reduced from 450,000
residents to about 150,000. Over 300,000 people -- most of
them African Americans, many of them poor -- have been
dispersed to some 44 states across the country. Those who
have been dispersed have been given no right of return. Many
are fighting to regain the properties, the homes, the
apartments, the jobs they once had. New Orleans has gone
from two-thirds
African American to majority white. In these conditions,
the city faces the scheduled election of the mayor and city
officials on April 22. Now those who fought through the
storm and survived FEMA's catastrophic incompetence at
relief and utter mismanagement of the recovery are about to
have their rights trampled once more. Louisiana and the
Bush administration have refused to provide satellite voting
places for those dispersed. They have refused to provide an
absentee ballot to every displaced registered voter.
Louisiana has been given the addresses of registered voters
who have been displaced but, incredibly, has refused to make
it available to the local candidates or election officials.
They are planning to hold an election with a secret voting
roll in New Orleans. The U.S. District Court of Louisiana
has refused to postpone the election to reverse this
injustice. If the projected April 22 election is allowed
to go forward, it will be the first time in history that a
public election will be held with secret voting rolls.
Candidates running for office will not be able to contact
voters; elected officials will not be able to communicate
with their constituents. Poor and vulnerable citizens,
displaced from their homes, will have to figure out where to
ask for an absentee ballot about an election that many may
not even know is taking place. The U.S. government
provided Iraqis with satellite polling booths to vote in the
Iraqi election. It provided Mexicans in America with
satellite polling booths to vote in the Mexican election.
Now it is refusing to provide American citizens brutalized
by natural disaster with the same access. The
administration, of course, wanted the election in Iraq and
Mexico to "turn out right" -- to elect people friendly to
the U.S. Failing to provide the same service to American
citizens suggests the administration wants the New Orleans
election to "turn out right" and is intentionally
suppressing the vote of those who
are dispersed. March 5 marked the anniversary of the
Selma March -- "bloody Sunday" in 1965 -- when state
troopers viciously attacked peaceful citizens marching for
the right to vote. The national revulsion at the horrors of
that day helped lead the way to the Voting Rights Act of
1965. Louisiana is one of the states covered by the act
because of its history of discrimination against its African-
American population. And now Louisiana, by refusing to
release the voting rolls of the dispersed citizens of New
Orleans, and by conspiring with the Bush administration to
deny dispersed registered residents ready access to polling
booths and absentee ballots, is once more acting with
blatant discriminatory effect. State Sen. Cleo Fields is
challenging this injustice in the court of law. But we must
challenge it in the court of America's conscience. On
April 1, ministers, concerned citizens and people of
conscience from across the country will gather in New
Orleans. We will march
across the Gretna Bridge, the bridge that was blocked by
state troopers and police when Katrina's survivors sought to
move toward shelter in the immediate wake of the storm.
We will demand voting rights and the right to return for all
the residents of New Orleans. We will not allow voting
rights to be trampled by those happy to build a New Orleans
stripped of its racial majority. Copyright © The Sun-
Times Company
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New Information:
Letha J. Mosley, Ph.D., OTR
Assistant Professor
University of Central Arkansas
Department of Occupational Therapy
201 Donaghey Avenue
P.O. Box 5001
Conway, AR 72035
Office: (501) 450-5567
Home:
867 Fendley Drive # H-12
Conway, AR 72032
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