Your Vote is Money - Use it Wisely - Free Press of Jacksonville

A Message From The Publisher | “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10 | By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.

Money seems to be the conduit between seeking office, holding office and being taken out of office. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has chosen a running mate who has never run for office before; however, the attorney and businessperson Nicole Shanahan, donated $4 million to Kennedy’s campaign and to the chief super PAC.

Judge Juan Merchan said he was issuing the ruling in part due to Trump’s past “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” comments about people involved with his other legal cases.

Do we really think that former president Trump has learned how to keep his mouth closed or better yet what amount of money can be taken away from him to make him shut up?

While the “other” people who all seem to fit under a cone shape hat with the letters MAGA are playing politricks, we the concerned about equality for all in the spirit of DEI are at whit’s end. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are administrative outlines which seek to encourage “the fair treatment and full participation of all people”, particularly groups “who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination” on the basis of uniqueness or debility. We are wondering just how far people are willing to go to let crooks, wanna be dictators, rapist, fascists and the malleable to ruin this country?

The non-voting public has a key role in our disappearing democracy as well. It’s like being in a row boat stuck in a whirlpool with Charybdis and you are refusing to paddle because you don’t believe it will help the situation. Well, I be damned if I‘m sitting in a boat with a tool in my hands that can be used to save all our lives and I refuse to use it.

As if the turbulent waters of economic disparities and income inequality were not enough to move you to vote, we now have huge cavities in educational attainment and disproportions in attaining wealth, quality healthcare, homeownership, affordable childcare and after-school programs.

Coupled with those, we are losing our minds while access to mental health services and resources seem as evasive as catching snow snakes.

Remember when we joked about JUSTICE meant ‘just us’ represented the entire prison population? Well, that has come to fruition with our overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. It’s kinda hard to stay out of prison when advanced early childhood education is lacking, and access to quality legal representation and justice is not blind. Add to that discriminatory lending practices and financial services have been purposefully RED LINED from you.

As human beings you want proper childcare, but you live in higher percentage of poverty in a food desert limited to affordable and nutritious food. At the same time you are exposed to environmental racism.

Those that came before us had no Affirmative Action policies, to address systemic racism. Their weapon of choice when they realized that we could not beat them with violence was to out vote them by choosing the ‘ballot over the bullet’.

They knew how to keep us “in control”; by taking away our voting rights and injecting voter suppression tactics through disenfranchising Black and Brown communities.

They want to stop teaching Black history in public institutions, and white wash our efforts and historical contributions, thereby minimizing us as the force we are.

Even though our rates of infant mortality are higher, disparities and critical issues in our communities are weighing us down like an anchor. We can’t give up nor give in.

We can’t not vote and we can never vote against that which will give us an opportunity to turn the tides in our favor.

If your presence at the poll does not make a difference, then your absence will!!!

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