Yesterday Politico reported on the House Appropriations subcommittee hearing involving the investigation into the Justice Department's handling of the voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers in Philadelphia.
The article reports:
""Think about that," Holder said. "When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia--which was inappropriate, certainly that...to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people," said Holder, who is black."
So let me make an attempt to understand that remark. The voter intimidation in Philadelphia does not rise to the level of the fight for the African American vote in the South, so it's not noteworthy. Sorry, Mr. Holder, to me, a man threatening me with a billy club at a polling place sends a message that my physical safety may be in danger. I am your basic little old lady, and I would find a tall man with a club who was not a policeman rather intimidating. The fact that your Justice Department refused to take this event seriously enough to charge the defendents and put them in jail (particularly when you consider that the video of the event went viral on YouTube) tells me that you do not take my right to vote seriously.
The article further reports:
"In a series of questions and comments earlier in the hearing, (Representative John) Culberson insisted that race had infected the decision-making process. "There's clearly evidence, overwhelming evidence, that your Department of Justice refuses to protect the rights of anybody other than African Americans to vote," the Texas Republican said. "There's a pattern of a double standard here.""
One of the heroes (although possibly reluctantly) of the Civil Rights Movement was Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson is quoted as saying, "Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact." Mr. Holder's Justice Department has not advanced the cause of Civil Rights, it has slowed it down.
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