Election Day Aftermath

[12dn94dst]

Good Afternoon Sorors and Sisterfriends,

As we ALL KNOW Election Day 2000 is tomorrow (and if you didn't know, now you do). I trust all reading are prepared to vote tomorrow. If you are not going to be in your home voting area during voting hours (7am to 7pm local time), I trust you have completed and mailed your absentee ballot. I'd also like to take this time to thank all who volunteered time to work voter registration drives. Keep up the good work and remember the work does not end here. Voter education and registration is a year-round priority for our community, not just an every 4 year thing.

I'd like to pass along an item that was in my inbox. God Bless you all and GO VOTE TOMORROW! When you refuse your right to vote, you lose your right to complain.

Kelli


from: http://www.naacp.org/Ten_reasons.htm

Ten reasons to Vote on November 7, 2000

1. The winners of this election will determine the quality of public education in the 21st Century.
They will decide how much money should be spent on reducing class size;
They will decide if federal monies should be used to help secure bonds for new school construction and renovations of older facilities;
They will decide if it is worthwhile to invest in teacher training and hiring new teachers;
They will decide how much money should be spent on wiring our schools for the 21st Century;
They will decide if schools should rely on a single examination to determine important decisions (such as graduating from high school or promoting students to the next grade), despite the fact that leading education experts nationwide recommend multiple measures of student performance for such decisions.
They will decide if federal money should be spent on strengthening our public schools or if it should be used to support private academies for a few, select students through school vouchers.

2. The winners of this election will determine the course of the American Judiciary for much of this century.
The next President is likely to nominate, and the US Senate will confirm or reject, as many as three US Supreme Court Justices;
The next President will nominate, and the US Senate will confirm, reject, or ignore people to fill as many as 100 vacancies on federal benches across the nation.
These justices may determine the fate of issues as diverse and important as Affirmative Action, school desegregation, workplace discrimination, basic civil rights, police brutality, voting rights, religious freedom, sexual harassment, prayer in school, death penalty appeals, immigration, welfare reform, the 2000 Census and school vouchers.

3. The winners of this election will determine whether "Driving While Black" statistics are gathered at national, state and local levels, or if racial profiling continues to be an all-too-real, yet undocumented, problem for drivers of color.

4. The winners of this election will decide if law enforcement misconduct and police brutality should continue to be tolerated and allowed to continue to exist, or if a comprehensive approach should be implemented to rebuild the trust and integrity of those charged with protecting and serving our neighborhoods.

5. The winners of this election will determine if the death penalty should continue to be handed down in a racially discriminatory manner or if a moratorium on executions should be put into place at least until issues such as the stark racial disparity, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate representation and irrefutable guilt or innocence are decided.

6. The winners of this election will determine if the dramatic racial, ethnic and gender disparities that exist in our health care system today should continue.
They will decide if subscribers to Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) deserve a serious "Patients' Bill of Rights" to ensure that consumers can hold health insurance companies responsible for medical decisions they may make which result in harm or death to the patient, can seek the services of a specialist when no specialist is available through the plan, and women can use their ob/gyns as their primary care doctors.
They will decide if racial and ethnic minority Americans should continue to suffer disproportionately from many severe health problems and have higher mortality rates than whites for many treatable health conditions.

7. The winners of the next election will decide if it should be easier for the federal government to get involved in investigating, prosecuting and preventing hate crimes across our country.

8. The winners of the next election will decide if we as a nation should have comprehensive, sane and sensible gun control laws that make it harder for criminals and children to get guns and easier for law enforcement agencies to trace guns that are used in a crime, accidents and suicides.

9. The winners of the next election will decide if the federal government will work to expand and ensure economic opportunities to all Americans including those historically locked out.
They will decide if predatory lending should be allowed to continue to ruin lives and communities, or if these unscrupulous banks and individuals should be put out of business;
They will decide of the Community Reinvestment Act should remain strong and continue to benefit untold millions of American people, neighborhoods and communities;
They will decide if the "New Markets" initiatives, including Empowerment Zones, should be allowed to continue to bring economic revivals and prosperity to areas of our nation that have been left out of the strong economic times enjoyed by so many Americans;

10. The winners will be in a place to address or ignore the vast and discriminatory racial disparities that continue to plague our American justice system.
They will or will not establish and support programs to address the disparate treatment of ethnic minority youth by almost every state and municipality in the nation;
They will or will not support policies to allow voters who are disenfranchised because of a past felony conviction to regain their basic right to vote once they have paid their debt to society;
They will or will not address the sentencing disparities that are leading to more and more people of color being put behind bars.

The winners of the November 7, 2000 election will determine the future of our nation.

You need to help determine who those winners will be.

[This message has been edited by 12dn94dst (edited November 06, 2000).]