I couldn't find any information in The WPost, The New York Times or any major newspaper about the NAACP marches and the hundreds or thousands of Afro-Americans who were not allowed to vote in Florida.
Your best bet is to watch the 60-minute PBS news that is on every evening. On the west coast it comes on at 6 PM.
Friday evening, I was dozing and woke up to find the anchor who spoke to people from various backgrounds, including a black scholar and one other person who said that The Supreme Court had diminished its reputation with what the called "a partisan report."
The news commentary went on to say that Afro-Americans were denied the right to vote even though they were registered.
At least six counties in Florida were under investigation.
The commentator said that if those Afro-Americans and other minorities could have voted that 9 out 10 would have voted for Gore. According to the report hundreds, if not thousands, of registered voters were not allowed to vote. Many were called felons.
The news report is called the McLearer???? I'll get the name from my husband.
I could not find any news about what is going on in the major newspaper so I assume they back off because they are cowards. So much for America's Free Press.
If you phone your local PBS station, you may be able to order a transcript of the news report that was on FRIDAY NIGHT.
But when I looked for information on the NAACP activities in Florida in the NY TIMES etc, I drew a blank so I went to the Internet and discovered that in the past, JEB BUSH, Florida's Governor, makes deals with right-wing Cubans who are REPUBLICANS. And I suppose they are Republicans because they get what they want.
These right-wing Cubans that Jeb Bush deals with are, according to the article: the Miami right wing group which has many ties to terrorists and drug smugglers
What was interesting about the PBS REport was that the majority of people who were not allowed to vote were mostly African-Americans and the Democratic Party had worked hard to get them registered. Some were from Haiti. And one woman thought it was a big deal that she could vote in the United States for the *first time* but when she went to the voting stations she discovered that she was NOT allowed to vote because her name had been stripped from the voter's register list.
I think the following article shows how the Bushes support the right-wing Cubans but it is difficult to read and you may want to copy it and break it down point by point. It was published on the NAACP thread.
According to this article, which I copied from the NAACP thread, Jeb Bush makes deals with right-wing Cubans for initiatives that the NACCP did not support. And isn't it interesting that these were the people who were not allowed to vote in the Florida election.
If the American Press continues to ignore the protests in Florida, perhaps the NAACP will set up its own website.
Here is the article:
The movement against "One Florida" The fight against conservatives seeking to end Affirmative Action
Cuban American National Foundation supports One Florida
"One Florida" is Governor Jeb Bush's program to get rid of Affirmative Action in the state of Florida.
The NAACP and many others organized a large march against One Florida on 3/7/2000 in Tallahasse and mustered between 25,000 to 80,000 participants, a very respectable showing for civil rights marches, comparable to the numbers in historic marches. The country ignored it.
Jeb Bush's One Florida initiative, supported by right wing Cuban Americans, is said to be in response to black California and Florida businessman Ward Connerly's drive to end Affirmative Action, known as the "Florida Civil Rights Initiative," using typical right wing double speak. Connerly was behind the California and Washington initiatives to end Affirmative Action and turned his attention to Florida in
1999, mounting a campaign which collected over $200,000 in that year. Observers estimate it will cost a total of around $500,000 for a successful campaign to gather the nearly half a million signatures required to get his Florida Civil Rights Initiative on the Florida ballot this year. The Bush brothers, Jeb and George W., both oppose Connerly, fearing he will detract from their efforts to draw dissaffected Democrats into their campaigns.
Polls show Connerly's initiative would win if it got on the ballot, which seems likely as state contractors are paying heavily to support it. The wording is key: 80% would support an initiative worded to end discrimination in contracting and college admissions while only 40% would support one worded to endAffirmative Action.
CANF watchers will be interested to note that the CANF (Cuban American National Foundation -- the Miami right wing group which has many ties to terrorists and drug smugglers) supports the end of Affirmative Action in Florida, which is not suprising as they have a consistent record against civil rights and against the advances of most any black group one can think of, from South Africa to Angola and Miami, passing of course via Cuba, where these folks were responsible for massive suffering and virulent racism prior to 1959 and where their policies and their manipulation of the US have created untold suffering in the decades since. Their reception of Nelson Mandela in Miami was certainly memorable as an insult.
Also interesting is the CANF's claim to represent all Latinos when announcing their support for Bush's One Florida initiative. There are many latinos who disagree! In fact, USA Today published the demographics for Miami: under Hispanics, there were Cubans 780,000. Nicaragans 105,000. Puerto Riquenos, 99,000. Columbians 75,000. Dominicans 35,000. Mexicans 32,000. Others 174,000. The non Cubans number 520,000. We suspect that state-wide, there is a stronger showing by non-Cubans.
Finally, we should note that the CANF is not alone in the Cuban American community in their support for One Florida -- most of the major Cuban American media outlets in South Florida have also come out against Affirmative Action.
afrocubaweb.com
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After I listened to the news it was impossible for me to believe that thousands of Afro-American people had their names removed from the Voter Registration List by accident Many of these people showed their voter's Registration Card, but they were denied the right to vote. This information has been in the news for quite awhile. What we didn't know was the extent of the numbers of disfranchised voters and we never knew about the NAACP marches.
If you see any news, let me know.
Thanks,
Mephisto |
