ATLANTA — In the latest public condemnation of Georgia’s controversial 2021 voting law, dozens of black students and activists marched downtown on Saturday at historic Morehouse College to push back what they called “anti-vote” measures in Georgia and elsewhere. states.
Beginning in 2021, SB 202, also known as the Election Integrity Act, made it illegal for anyone in Georgia to give a bottle of water to a hot or thirsty person while standing in line to vote. Those who attended Saturday’s rally called SB 202 one of “many inhumane laws that try to disenfranchise black and brown people,” said Nicole Carty, the organization’s executive director. Get it for freea movement led by Gen Z and millennials focused on social justice.
“To criminalize such an act of humanity and dignity is clearly inhumane,” he said. “It really shows the broader inhumanity and inequality of all these voter laws that are happening.”
Karti added: “It is not just about not being able to provide water. Many of the most insidious components of these anti-voter laws are deep in bureaucracy and Jim Crow. So we’re using it to shed light on what’s inhumane about these laws.”
SB 202 consists of 98 pages a series of election measures that prohibit the mailing of unsolicited ballots to officials, minimize the use of ballot boxes, allow registered voters to be removed from voting lists, and prohibit food or water from being served to voters within or within 150 feet of a polling place. Other restrictions include 25 feet of voters standing in line. Violators can be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
At a rally before the march, under the shadow of a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in the plaza of an international church named after the famous civil rights leader, speakers protested SB 202, calling it a “discriminatory and immoral” attack on Democrats. polling stations with often long queues to vote.
Republicans who passed the bill in Georgia said it would prohibit attempts to influence voters before they reach the ballot box. They also cited food trucks parked outside polling places, as they did during the 2020 US Senate runoffs and presidential elections. Gov. Brian Kemp said the law will “ensure Georgia’s elections are safe, fair and accessible.”
While the crowd at Morehouse was small compared to other political events, “the importance of what we’re doing here and what it means is huge,” Carty said.
“In 2020, there were people standing in line for five, six, seven hours to vote,” Matthew Johnson, Georgia campaign manager for Faith in Public Life, told the crowd. There were people who came and gave them vital materials like food and water. Now imagine that you see the problem not as waiting for hours, but as food and water. “Imagine being so bold as to try to convince us that this is to protect the integrity of the election.”
Advocacy groups Get Free, the Atlanta NAACP and Collective Renaissance Guild, Georgia ADAPT and New Disabilities South have partnered to organize the event on a day when Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama are in Atlanta.
“There’s a lot going on here, and it’s all for the better,” Carty said. “This is a consecutive election and everyone who wants to vote should have no problem getting to the polls or getting water if they need it.”
“We’re in the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement and we’re in the cradle of voter suppression,” said Gerald Griggs, president of the NAACP’s Georgia conference. “It is important that we dramatize what is at stake. Our ancestors fought, led and died for this most precious right that they tried to take away from us. That’s why we want to say right now that we will not return.”
The rights of disabled voters were also in focus at the meeting. Dom Kelly, executive director of New Disabled South, said he stood in line for 11 hours during the last election. In predominantly black Randolph County, Georgia, Kemp “tried to close nine of 13 polling places instead of improving accessibility for disabled voters,” Kemp said. “Black voters would be pushed behind disabled voters. This has been going on and on for a very long time.”
Carty said it was too late to make any changes for the Nov. 5 election; early voting has already begun Record fashion in Georgia. However, their organization lays the groundwork for further action.
“This is how the Voting Rights Act is under attack,” he said. “We really need federal action to repeal these laws that are happening all over the country. But what we can do in the meantime is to mobilize a crowd against Jim Crow 2.0 and make sure other Americans know the strategy to try to cast those voices in Black and brown. [precincts]so that if something goes wrong after the election day, they don’t get caught up in it.”