Brett Bursey works the SC Progressive Network’s table at Columbia’s annual Blues Festival in Martin Luther King Jr. Park Oct. 11, 2008.
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Splitting facial hairs
Leave it to Faux News to do a story this insipid.
Ten years later, still no hate crime law
By Elke Kennedy
Sean’s Last Wish
This week, Americans are mourning the 10-year observance of the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard. It’s hard for any of us to relive the memories — a promising 21-year-old college student beaten to death and tied to a fence outside of Laramie, Wyo., just because he was gay.
Harder still for me. Watching the coverage of this high-profile case, I could not foresee that a similar tragedy would happen in my own family a few years later.
On May 16, 2007, my son Sean Kennedy was leaving a bar in Greenville. A car with three boys in it was parked outside the door, and one of them called Sean over, asking him for a cigarette. Sean gave him one and was walking away when Stephen Andrew Moeller got out, approached my son and called him anti-gay epithets. He punched him in the face, and Sean fell to the ground.
Sean’s murderer got back into the car and left my son dying there. A little later, he left a message on Sean’s friend’s phone: “You tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand.” When I got to the hospital, the doctors told me that Sean’s injuries were not survivable because his brain had separated from his brain stem. Sean was pronounced brain dead at 11:20 that evening. He loved music, was happy with who he was and stood up for what he believed in. He wanted to be a Web designer. He was only 20 years old.
As hard as the stories of Matthew and Sean are to hear, they represent only two out of hundreds of violent incidents targeting gay and transgender people across the country.
Sadly, South Carolina’s absence of any hate crimes law makes gay and transgender residents more susceptible targets of such crimes. The FBI’s 2006 reporting found that 16 percent of hate crimes were based on sexual orientation — even more than crimes based on ethnicity or national origin. (South Carolina does not identify or track hate crimes statistics, so they are not included in national statistics.)
It is inexcusable in 2008 that South Carolina remains one of only five states in the country that does not have a hate crimes law. Tragically coincidental is the fact that Wyoming, where Matthew was murdered in 1998, also is among those five.
On June 11, Stephen Andrew Moeller was given a three-year sentence for Sean’s murder. Since he received credit for days served before he was released on bond, he will have to serve only 10 months in prison before he is eligible for parole. This shockingly short sentence sends the message that it is OK to attack and kill people just because you don’t like who they are. Justice was not done for my son.
Sean’s murder was not considered a hate crime because there is no such thing in our state. Every single one of our members of Congress also voted against the national Matthew Shepard Act, claiming that our state could handle these types of cases without federal laws. But this was certainly not so in Sean’s case.
We need a federal law to protect gay and transgender people such as Sean, but South Carolina can’t wait while Congress keeps stalling on an inclusive act and more young people like Sean are murdered. We must act now.
However, just changing our laws is not enough. We must change hearts and minds, and we must work together by embracing diversity, supporting and standing with each other and speaking out.
After Sean’s death, I founded Sean’s Last Wish (www.seanslastwish.com) to work on educating the public about the gaps in the law and the lack of protection. We educate about how bullying, intolerance, hatred and violence lead to these senseless crimes, and we provide information and resources about how everyone can help prevent hate crimes.
It’s time to honor Matthew’s and Sean’s legacies by sending this strong message: Bullying, hatred and violence have no place in our hearts, homes, churches, states and countries. No mother should ever have to bury her child. No mother should ever lose her child to hate and violence. No mother should ever have to fight for justice for her child.
Making change, one voter at a time
SC Progressive Network Midlands Coordinator John Dawkins oversees the registration drive on North Main St. in Columbia on Oct. 4, the last day to register new voters before the November elections.
Dawkins and a crew of volunteers registered 199 new voters in an afternoon. Similar volunteers across the state have spent months recruiting new voters as part of the Network’s Missing Voter Project.
Why Palin drives feminists crazy
By Becci Robbins
She’s only been on the scene five weeks, and I’m suffering severe Sarah fatigue. You know which Sarah. The one tapped by the McCain camp in a cynical attempt to shore up the crippled wing of his fundamentalist base. The one who has been winking and obfuscating her way through a tightly scripted campaign that is relying on style over substance, sound bites over sound public policy.
As a woman, I want to see Sarah Palin do well, knowing that her performance reflects — fairly or not — on all women and our perceived ability to lead. As a feminist, I want to enroll her in a women’s studies program. If she knew her history, she couldn’t so easily impose her anti-choice ideology, wouldn’t presume to know what’s best for all women.
Palin holds an extreme position on reproductive rights, opposing contraception and access to abortion, even for rape victims. And yet she cried foul when reporters dared mention her unmarried pregnant teenage daughter — never mind that Palin’s abstinence-only agenda makes it a legitimate point of discussion. Our government has spent over $1 billion to fund abstinence-only sex education programs since 1996. That approach has failed countless young women, including, apparently, Palin’s own daughter.
Rather than talk about it, Palin simply said that her children should be off limits. But in the vice-presidential debate she repeatedly mentioned her son in Iraq and her special-needs child. She did not mention her pregnant daughter. Apparently it’s okay to talk about her kids as long as they serve the campaign’s interest.
Yes, Palin proudly touts her pro-life credentials. While she sits in her office on a couch covered with a bear skin, the head still attached. While she shows off photos of her and her four-year-old daughter posing with the caribou she shot. While advocating hunting wild game from the safety of a low-flying aircraft.
When Palin talks about life, she is referring to pre-born human life. Not the lives of grown women. Not the lives of children her running mate would deny health care. Not, certainly, the lives of the animals with whom we share this planet. Not even the life of the planet itself, which will continue to suffer the devastating effect of America’s petroleum addiction, which Palin advocates when she gleefully chants, as she did in the debate, “Drill, baby, drill!”
The debate was little more than cheap theater. The McCain camp had negotiated its terms, in effect dumbing down the debate. The contract limited the candidates’ responses to 90 seconds, discouraged the moderator from asking follow-up questions, and prohibited the candidates from asking each other questions. The format helped ward off the sort of embarrassment an unscripted Palin revealed in recent network television interviews.
Instead of an honest debate, we had Sen. Joe Biden biting his tongue — warned by his handlers to play nice — and Gov. Palin ignoring the moderator’s questions and providing instead well-worn one-liners, off topic and sometimes off the wall. She was like a Chatty Cathy doll programmed with conservative talking points. Pull the string, and she spouts a few sentences.
Fortunately, I’m not the only one underwhelmed by her performance. A number of conservative pundits have grudgingly admitted that Palin is not ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Kathleen Parker’s Sept. 26 editorial, in which she suggested Palin pull herself out of the race, garnered the most attention. “If BS were currency,” Parker wrote, “Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.” If she were a man, she continued, we’d be laughing; but since she’s the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket, we can’t say the painful truth.
In earlier editorials, Parker was Palin’s biggest cheerleader. “Palin is everything liberals have always purported to want for women — freedom to choose, opportunities for both career and family, a shot at the top ranks of American political life,” she wrote. “With five children and an impressive resume, Palin should be Miss July in the go-girl calendar.”
In an editorial she wrote after the Republican convention, she gushed, “No one is going to be embarrassed by John McCain’s maverick pick.”
What a difference a few weeks make.
And in a twist of irony, the pundit who has made a career out of skewering the opposition with barbs aimed, more often than not, at women on the Left, got a taste of her own venom. After her editorial pleading for Palin to pull out of the race, she found herself on the receiving end of her party’s most rabidly partisan element. In her latest piece, she writes about being called an idiot, a traitor, about people writing angry and threatening letters.
Surprised and dismayed, she writes, “Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn’t sound American to me.”
Sadly, that is the America she helped create.
There are lessons here for us all. May we learn them before it is too late.
SC Election Protection volunteers needed
866-OUR-VOTE Hotline Set Up in South Carolina
The SC Progressive Network is once again organizing nonpartisan election protection work to ensure that all eligible voters’ ballots count in the upcoming election. In the past two general elections, we responded to calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE toll-free hotline set up for voters to call if they had problems at the polls. The hotline received over 500 calls.
While most of the calls were from confused voters, some reported incidents of voter intimidation and efforts at vote suppression. Some calls were referred to SLED or the Justice Department. We were able to deal with most problems by having a volunteer call the voter. With the assistance of volunteer attorneys and informed volunteers, we were able to dispatch someone directly to most of the problem precincts.
We are assembling a directory of attorneys and informed volunteers willing to respond to calls for help in their county on Election Day. While most problems can be resolved by telephone, some require going to the problem precinct.
We need help on Nov. 4 and in the days leading up to the election. Election Protection Volunteers (not necessarily attorneys) are needed to deliver signs to the county election boards for placement in the precincts, to monitor the operation of the voting computers and to report problems at the precincts. A South Carolina Legal Manual prepared by the Election Protection Coalition is available to volunteers that answers a wide range of election-related questions.
This is a nonpartisan effort. Participants can neither support or oppose candidates, and must offer assistance regardless of voters’ party affiliation.
To volunteer, please contact Brett Bursey at 803-808-3384 or network@scpronet.com. We will need your contact information, your hours of availability and services you are offering. Your information will be shared only with coordinators of the Election Protection coalition. There will be a volunteer training by conference call.
For details on the Election Protection coalition click here.
Funnies
Let’s do the numbers
INSTITUTE INDEX
Disenfranchised by design
Estimated number of Americans who have currently or permanently lost their voting rights because of a felony conviction: 5.3 million
Of those, number that are ex-offenders who have completed their sentences: 2.1 million
Number of black men who are disenfranchised as a result of a felony conviction: 1.4 million
Percentage of black men that represents: 13
Number of times by which black men’s disenfranchisement rate exceeds the national average: 7
In states that disenfranchise ex-offenders, percent of black men who may permanently lose their right to vote: 40
Number of states that permit even inmates to vote: 2*
Number of states that deny voting rights to all convicted felons for life: 2**
Number of Virginians permanently disenfranchised as of 2004 due to felony convictions: 377,000
Of those disenfranchised Virginians, percent who are black: 55
Number of nonviolent felons who’ve had their voting rights restored by Virginia’s two recent Democratic governors: 5,990
Number of Alabama inmates who filled out voter registration forms over the course of two days last month before the effort was halted by the Republican prison commissioner: 80
Percent of South Carolina elections officials who answered incorrectly when surveyed last month about ex-felons’ voting rights: 48
Estimated number of ex-felons who were unable to vote in Florida during the 2004 election: 960,000
George Bush’s winning margin over John Kerry in Florida that year: 380,978
* Maine and Vermont
** Kentucky and Virginia
All sources on file with the Institute for Southern Studies. For more information, e-mail sue@southernstudies.org.