Ron Walters: Voter Disfranchisement - SHAME ON US

I have seldom seen tears come to his eyes.  But there was Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., sitting in front of Detroit Rep. John Conyers, expressing his pain at the indignity of having to fight to legitimize the right to vote all over again, urging the Congressional Black Caucus to go to Ohio and hold hearings on the massive evidence coming out of voter disenfranchisement coming out of that state. To his credit, Rep. Conyers not only responded, but was somewhat ahead of Jackson by calling the hearing in the first place. And he also committed himself and the CBC to going to Ohio and other places to continue the fact-finding role they were pursuing.  The hearing was packed with individuals, many of whom had important information on the degree of voter disenfranchisement. Jackson's tears should be our tears, to such an extent that we become resigned to turn our pain into power. How can we do that? We should de-legitimize this election by making noise about the stealing of elections in America. Isn't it strange that -- and there was testimony to the fact -- that most of the voting irregularities have been about people who tried to vote for John Kerry, or Al Gore, but were prevented from doing so. Well, they fooled us once, shame on them, and now they have fooled us again, shame on us. Shame on us for believing that all of this is accidental. Shame on us for allowing the people we vote for to turn their back and walk away from challenging the system to count our votes. Shame on us for not mounting a means to protest loudly what has happened in our name and most importantly in the name of Democracy. Shame on us for allowing the massive double-standard to exist, where the American president stands before the world and criticizing the result of elections in the Ukraine, when his own house is filthy. And just shame on us for having the audacity to call people out to vote and then allow the system to corrupt the innocence faith they have invested in the political system to work in a fair and unbiased manner. [more]