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  • U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett leads ‘clapback’ conversation on MAGA, voting rights, and Black lives during CBC week

    U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett leads ‘clapback’ conversation on MAGA, voting rights, and Black lives during CBC week

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    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Everyone hears the discussions centered on the importance of voting. Plus, everyone shares the challenges with convincing some Black and African-Americans to vote. But, the ‘Make America Great Again’ wing of the Republican Party is making Black Americans and immigrants the faces of illegal voting. During the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference at Congressional Black Caucus Weekend, Angela Rye moderated a conversation led by U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett about how to deal with MAGA, respond to their attacks, among other topics. 

    This action of responding to the opposition during a debate is classically known as ‘the clapback.’

    U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett speaks at a panel discussion during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference on Friday, September 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo Courtesy: Itoro N. Umontuen/The Atlanta Voice)

    Joining Crockett and Rye were Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, the Senior Pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas and Christian D. Menefee, the chief civil lawyer for Harris County, Texas which is where Houston is located. 

    “If I am supposed to be a representative of a group of people, and I allow somebody to walk all over me, then that’s like I’m saying it’s okay to walk over my people,” explained U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. Have you seen [U.S. Congresswoman] Marjorie [Taylor Greene] lately?” 

    A Texas-sized story about the right to vote

    First, the prominent Crystal Mason shared her experience of being wrongfully convicted for voting while on supervised release in Dallas. In 2016, she provisionally cast her ballot during the presidential election after completing her federal jail sentence. But, the State of Texas prosecuted Mason for the crime of “illegal voting,” the act bars someone who “votes or attempts to vote in an election in which the person knows [they are] not eligible to vote.” 

    Mason said the state considered her ineligible to vote at the time but was still convicted in March 2018 and sentenced to serve five years in state prison. 

    Crystal Mason speaks at a panel discussion during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference on Friday, September 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo Courtesy: Itoro N. Umontuen/The Atlanta Voice)

    “You have got to realize: the judge, the D.A., the prosecutor, and their elected officials, and this is why it is so important to vote,” explains Mason. “I grow weary. You know, ‘my God, why me?’ Why me? Say, ‘why not? You’re the prime example of rehabilitation.’ So this is why I matter in this fight.”

    Mason has had the ability to converse with her Pastor, Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, the Senior Pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett throughout her ordeal. Crockett, who herself has famously taken on MAGA Republicans, implored the capacity crowd to understand first the ways MAGA values Black lives. Secondly, Crockett explains why Vice President Kamala Harris, and Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, are the prosecutors MAGA are afraid of. 

    “One of the issues that I have right now is having to deal with people that take issue with the Vice President, because she is a former prosecutor,” explains Crockett. “Y’all, we need the findings of the world, this is one of the good ones. So was our vice president. You can’t sit there and skip the DA race, because that’s how we end up with the Crystal Masons. 

    Angela Rye speaks at a panel discussion during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference on Friday, September 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo Courtesy: Itoro N. Umontuen/The Atlanta Voice)

    That’s how we end up with our brothers, our sisters, our cousins, all being incarcerated for little or nothing and getting the highest amount of time. Y’all got to think through this! It’s one of the reasons that they’re constantly going after our access to the ballot box. This country is actually browning, and it is scaring them, and so they want to make sure that they can take away your voice.”

    There is another gentleman, Hervis Rogers. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused him of voting while on parole in the 2020 Presidential Election. Texas Republicans tried to make two Black people the face of illegal voting in the state. That is intentional. Why? They attempted to associate corruption, illegal voting, illegal registrations with Black and Brown people, and it’s an intentional strategy to try to undermine the right to vote. 

    “But make no mistake, what you’re seeing in Texas right now is something that will spread throughout the country if we put the wrong person in the White House,” says Merritt. [Also] if we put the wrong folks in Congress. In some other jurisdictions, y’all got it sweet. It’s real hand to hand combat dealing with these folks.”

    Vote for every position on the ballot, not just for President

    Willis supported Crockett’s point of individuals entering the ballot box, voting for the highest office in the land, and then walking out. She characterized those actions as ‘a disgrace’. Willis also says there are so many things of consequence that can be traced to who does not vote. 

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis sits on a panel discussion during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference on Friday, September 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo Courtesy: Itoro N. Umontuen/The Atlanta Voice)

    “I tell people all the time I had no intentions of being a controversial D.A.,” says Willis. “I didn’t know that it was controversial to say that ‘everyone is equal under the law,’ but apparently people are okay with prosecutors that are okay with just putting Black young men in jail, but don’t hold everyone accountable to the law.”

    In Georgia, Florida and Texas, for example, individuals can review anybody’s voting record and registration status if they know that person’s name, date of birth and county of residence. Willis won her election in 2020. Since then, her office has charged rapper Young Thug and former President Donald Trump under Georgia’s RICO statute. During her time in D.C., she addressed her naysayers. However, Willis made one point crystal clear.

    “The first level of intimidation is, what can they call you,’ explains Willis. “So they’ll call you the D.E.I. D.A. they’ll call you a thot. They’ll call you very, very ugly things. And I’ve been called all of them, but I was taught long ago ‘it ain’t what you call me is what I answer to.’ So we as people cannot be reactive to every ignorant insult, because you’re dealing with ignorant people.”

    The charge

    Beyond the clapback, the call to strategize, organize and mobilize voters was heard loud and clear. In his church, Haynes gives people a membership card in one hand and a voter registration card in the other hand. The Pastor also let everyone know there is no perfect candidate. But, it’s up to the collective to push the right candidate. 

    “We saw on Tuesday that if Kamala Harris was a white male, this wouldn’t be a race,” said Haynes. “It would be over. Period.  And yet, this country still has an issue with whiteness. And so as a consequence, we have a responsibility to work 10 times as hard as we do in our individual lives. We’ve got to do it as a collective.” 

    Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, Senior Pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, speaks at a panel discussion during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference on Friday, September 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo Courtesy: Itoro N. Umontuen/The Atlanta Voice)

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    Itoro N. Umontuen

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  • Maryland candidates join Congressional Black Caucus conference, work to double number of Black women in US Senate – WTOP News

    Maryland candidates join Congressional Black Caucus conference, work to double number of Black women in US Senate – WTOP News

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    Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) said she understood the significance of math when she walked into the U.S. Senate chamber last year as just the third Black woman and 12th Black person ever to serve in the chamber.

    This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partners at Maryland Matters. Sign up for Maryland Matters’ free email subscription today.

    Angela Rye moderates a Sept. 13 panel, “Black Women Belong…In the Senate,” at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s conference. Others, from left, are Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Senate candidates from Maryland and Delaware, respectively, and Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.). Photo by William J. Ford

    Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) said she understood the significance of math when she walked into the U.S. Senate chamber last year as just the third Black woman and 12th Black person ever to serve in the chamber.

    Butler, who will step down when her term expires in January, said the number of elected Black women senators could double this fall if voters elect U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D).

    “I’m so excited that we are about to move beyond the acceptance of having just one. We’re going to be bold enough to send two to the United States Senate,” Butler said Friday, the third day of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s legislative conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

    “I’m excited for the doors that they are going to keep kicking open when we are no longer counting how many, but that we are welcoming women, Black women, women of color, women of all experiences and walks of life to the highest chamber in our United States government,” Butler said.

    Butler was appointed to the Senate after the death of longtime California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Only two Black women have been elected to the chamber: Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois was the first, in 1992, and Vice President Kamala Harris was elected in 2016 from California.

    If Rochester and Alsobrooks are elected this fall, then, the total number of Black women elected to serve in the Senate in its history will double from two to four. All the women are Democrats.

    In Delaware, home to President Joe Biden, Rochester is the heavy favorite to win against Republican Eric Hansen and independent Michael Katz. She has served as Delaware secretary of labor, personnel director with the state’s Office of Management and Budget, and CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League.

    “We are qualified,” Rochester said. “We don’t just step up into this and it wasn’t, ‘Poof. Now I’m here.’”

    Rochester said sometimes when she walks into a room with a male Senate colleague, people will “call him senator and me Lisa. It’s important how we present ourselves.” 

    In neighboring Maryland, Alsobrooks has a more competitive race against two-term former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican. She said her race “is center stage” in the fight to determine control of the Senate, repeating a central theme of her campaign.

    “When we elect Kamala Harris to be our president, she’s going to need to have the majority in the Senate so that she can get her agenda across,” Alsobrooks said.

    She also took aim at Hogan’s position on abortion, another campaign theme, saying the former governor “is, bless his heart, he’s shifting and changing and all kind of things.”

    Alsobrooks noted that vetoed legislation two years ago to expand abortion access in the state, and when that veto was overridden by the Democratic-controlled legislature, he withheld state funding that would have been used to train non-physicians to perform abortions. That money was released by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore on his first day in office last year.

    Hogan has pushed back on the abortion argument, saying repeatedly that while he personally opposes abortion, he would vote to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.

    And the Hogan campaign this week turned the control of the Senate argument on its head with a new ad that says Hogan would be a “critical swing vote” in a closely divided Senate. To drive the point home, the campaign pointed to an endorsement of Hogan by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who often broke with his party in recent years, giving him outsized influence in the Senate.

    Despite their qualifications, Rochester said women are still viewed differently than men who are elected to office.

    Alsobrooks’ career spans 27 years, including serving as the county’s first full-time prosecutor to handle domestic violence cases, the youngest and first woman elected as the county state’s attorney in 2010 and the first woman elected to be county executive eight years later.

    Butler was president of California’s biggest union of long-term care workers, Service Employees International Union 2015. She also served as an adviser when Harris launched a 2019 campaign for president.

    If elected, Rochester said she and Alsobrooks, who affectionately call each other future “sister senator,” plan to push to codify Roe v. Wade. The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 two years ago in favor of a Mississippi ban on abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allowing states to set their own rules for abortion.

    “I have my daughter sitting right here on the front row, and she now has less rights than we did and that ain’t right,” Rochester said. “So, we want to make sure that those who come before us and those who are here now have the right to do with their body what they want.”

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    Ivy Lyons

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