Source: cpl.org
We at the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative are committed to working for racial and gender equity, and to promote women’s economic security, specifically for low-income single moms. During this Black History Month, we elevate two legislative proposals that could have lifelong impacts on Black women.
By Carol Burnett, MLICCI Executive Director
Black History Month often focuses on past leaders and movements who have made positive contributions to our politics, economy, educational institutions, and communities. We at MLICCI celebrate and recognize how important such efforts are to correct and complete our nation’s history. But at this moment in February 2021, we want to use this Black History Month occasion to lift up two specific and current pieces of legislation making their way through our State Legislature that will impact life in our state for all of us, and particularly for Black and female citizens.
SB 2588: If you don't use your vote, your will lose your vote.
First, please take a moment to learn about SB 2588. This bill threatens to disenfranchise voters and amounts to voter suppression. How SB 2588 is linked to Black History Month is made clear by Sen. David Jordan in this Mississippi Today piece: https://mississippitoday.org/2021/02/10/senate-passes-voter-fraud-bill-that-some-say-could-disenfranchise-black-mississippians/
We concur wholeheartedly with our partners at ACLU of MS who wrote the following Jan. 26, 2021 opinion piece that we have edited slightly to reflect the fact that this bill passed the Senate and has moved to the House where it must be stopped since their editorial was published:
"Mississippians should not be disenfranchised for simply not voting in an election. Yet, the State Senate SB 2588, legislation that would force election commissioners to remove voters from the voter rolls for simply not voting.
"The right to vote should not be a “use it or lose it” policy. Once registered, a voter should not be disenfranchised so long as the voter remains eligible to vote. That basic principle is one that should be jealously guarded in our democracy regardless of one’s political persuasion.
"Last November, thousands of Mississippians were forced to stand in line for hours to cast their vote. Mississippi lawmakers should pass reforms that are proven to make voting safer and easier. Mississippians deserve to be able to register to vote online. Mississippians deserve access to in-person early voting. These are sensible, bipartisan reforms that would actually make life a little easier for the people of our state.
"Instead, our legislature is moving backwards with SB 2588. Voter purges risk disenfranchising properly registered voters and cause confusion and delay at the polls. Such practices inevitably flag eligible voters for removal and have again and again been shown to have a disproportionate impact on racial and language minority communities.
"Prior to committee passage, the chairman of the Senate Elections Committee, Jeff Tate, was asked a simple question about Senate Bill 2588. “Why?”
"Senator Tate never answered that question.
"We already know that aggressive voter purges are outright voter suppression tools. These purges would disenfranchise many eligible and previously-registered voters who do not know until Election Day that they have been purged.
"The full and should reject SB 2588."
Second, our state continues to refuse to expand Medicaid when evidence shows that expanding Medicaid will benefit Mississippi’s working poor who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford health insurance. Many of these workers are Black and most are female. Evidence shows this funding would save rural hospitals that are not currently surviving. Evidence also shows overwhelming public support for expanding Medicaid. Evidence also shows the huge economic benefit to the state of this influx of federal funding.
In fact, here is a piece from the MS Center for Investigative Journalism entitled, “Mississippi has already kissed $7B goodbye, thanks to its failure to expand Medicaid. Will the state make that $20B?”: https://www.mississippicir.org/news/mississippi-has-already-kissed-7b-goodbye. Yet our State Legislature is refusing to take this popular, needed, economically beneficial step.
This exchange taken from the Mississippi Today article on the Senate vote along party lines to deny our working-poor Mississippi families help with health coverage in the midst of a pandemic is revealing: “At times, the debate on the issue became emotional. Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, asked McDaniel how could he consider himself a Christian and be opposed to providing help to the needy. McDaniel said he did not consider it Christian to support a program that was adding to the nation’s debt.” (https://mississippitoday.org/2021/02/09/senate-republicans-reject-plan-to-expand-medicaid-provide-health-care-coverage-to-300000-more-mississippians/ )
Indeed, how can representatives who claim to be Christian deny health care for those who need it, especially in the midst of a pandemic, and especially when all evidence shows the benefits of doing so.
I am a United Methodist minister. A central teaching in Christianity is compassion and mercy for the poor. There are many scriptures to point to, but this relevant one comes first to mind from Matthew 25:34-40:
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Paul Krugman, in his book, “Conscience of a Liberal,” wrote about President Truman’s 1946 proposal for a national health care system. He writes, “(t)here was crucial opposition to national health insurance from Southern Democrats, despite the fact that the impoverished South, where many people couldn’t afford adequate medical care, would have gained a financial windfall. But Southern politicians believed that a national health insurance system would force the region to racially integrate its hospitals. … Keeping black people out of white hospitals was more important to Southern politicians than providing poor whites with the means to get medical treatment.”
Are we reliving this today?
As we celebrate February as Black History month, let’s do so by continuing the unfinished business of working to achieve racial equity. Two Mississippi-specific and immediate tasks at hand are: 1) protecting our citizens’ right to vote in this place where every advancement to achieve the right to vote for Black citizens has been hard-won; and 2) expanding Medicaid to extend the humane and compassionate benefit of health care to our working-poor, vulnerable citizens who are mostly Black and female.
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