Redistricting conspiracy
It is common knowledge that redistricting is used many times to give parties marginal advantages. They are drawn to increase the chances of a particular party winning. Most of the times however this is accomplished via ‘natural’ demographics.
There is something scandalous and outright conspiratorial in the manner in which the Florida Republican Party is trying to use redistricting to oust Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown. NewsOne Now reported the following.
Members of the Florida Republican Party conducted a secret meeting to lay out a plan to unseat Congresswoman Corrine Brown through redistricting. The plan – spearheaded by Florida State Rep. Janet Adkins – would pack inmates/felons who are ineligible to vote into the 5th Congressional District.
But as lawmakers and GOP activists in the meeting were secretly plotting against Brown, they were also secretly being recorded.
In the recording Republican Florida State Representative Janet Adkins said the following.
They’re a part of the population. No, they can’t vote. So when you take a look at, and I don’t know what the numbers are, but you take a look at how many minorities are in the prisons within that newly drawn proposed congressional — how many of them live in the prisons, that’s why Corrine Brown is so against having an east-west, because her concern is that they live in prisons and they can’t vote. So it’s a perfect storm.
It’s a perfect storm, you’re now reducing the percentage of minorities within that district and you draw it in such a fashion that perhaps a majority, or maybe not a majority, but a number of them will live in the prisons, thereby not being able to vote. You can actually, Danny, you can be the person that will help gt rid of [Rep.] Corrine Brown.
It is obvious that the rational behind Rep. Janet Adkins conspiracy to oust Corrine Brown is in conflict with the Voting Rights Act. However with the Supreme Court striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, a suit cannot occur until there are instantiated damages. It is evident that Rep. Janet Adkins is well aware of that. The following portion of the secret tape makes that clear.
I understand Corrine Brown filed a lawsuit and what I understand about that is that she can’t really claim damages until after there’s and election and after she loses. And so I think her lawsuit is on ice, until you know, I don’t think anything is going to happen to her lawsuit until she’s actually harmed.
There is much to understand in this one issue. Many times it is said that those not in the majority are paranoid about what happens behind closed doors. Many times when one speaks about the prison industrial complex serving many purposes, all detrimental to people of color, they are dismissed as being conspiratorial.
Here is what must be inferred from the data. The prison industrial complex is a profit center for many large politically powerful people. It must be fed with human bodies. Law enforcement is the conveyor belt that transports humanity to the prison industrial complex. Criminalizing those without power, generally people of color, allows the justice system to populate that conveyor belt with powerless people who have no recourse to change the system. A political system that prevents the condemned from voting and places a fear into ‘the other’ ensures that retribution is minimal.
Republican Representative Janet Adkins was just tying up the lose ends. Having her on tape hopefully ensures that people of good faith, people who want to be allies for good, will not allow these American injustices to continue. We must live up to who we claim we are.
(h/t NewsOne Now)