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Speaking at
the 50th anniversary March on Washington
Reenactment on August 28, 2013, State Representative and
Ohio Legislative Black Caucus President Alicia Reece
(D-Cincinnati) drew a line in the sand when she declared “No
more temporary solutions to permanent problems.”
More than mere rhetorical flair, the speech announced the
current attack on voting rights in Ohio as the uncompromised
boundary to an ever-intensifying extremist assault on
workers’ rights, public education, women’s rights, civil
rights in the criminal justice system and the politics of
black fear manifest in Stand Your Ground legislation.
Representative Reece, also a board member of the National
Action Network, took time to speak with me about the Ohio
Voter Bill of Rights, an initiative she organized in Ohio as
a paradigm for national implementation to counter political
extremism.
Perryman:
Please tell our readers about your involvement with this new
initiative, the Ohio Voter Bill of Rights.
Reece:
Well, I am the Chair of the Ohio Voter Bill of Rights
Committee and I’m also president of the Ohio Legislative
Black Caucus. After being in the legislature and seeing all
of the voter suppression bills that have come forward to
dismantle voter rights and then to go back to my district
and see voter intimidation billboards put up across the
street from where I live, having a polling location where
provisional ballots took two years and $1 million in
lawsuits in order for anyone to count them. And then, being
asked to speak at the 50th Anniversary of the
March on Washington, and the week before, the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 Section Five was deemed unconstitutional by the
United States Supreme Court.
It was then I thought
about the gains that have been made during the Civil Rights
Movement. Many of those gains, such as the Voter’s Rights
Act, were not permanent and so we need to move now in this
current generation to make some of Dr. King’s dreams
permanent. And so, I stated in my speech at the March on
Washington that we have to have “no more temporary solutions
to permanent problems” and that it’s time for a
constitutional amendment that can be put into the various
state constitutions across the country starting with Ohio in
2014. So that’s kind of how the ball got rolling.
We returned to Ohio and
began working and pulling together a coalition of civil
rights leaders, clergy, Prince Hall Masons, NAACP State
Chapter, National Action Network and many others in the Ohio
Student Association and we launched the movement.
Perryman:
Well, you seem to have pulled together an impressive
coalition. But my question is can a fractured black
community come together on an issue as great as this? Can we
put our internal differences aside in order to sustain the
collective action that a worthy issue like this requires?
Reece:
Oh absolutely, absolutely. I also have to mention that the
A. Phillip Randolph Institute is a part of this. But, I
think so. I have experienced from kickoff, groups of folks
who had not maybe worked together on an issue such as this
who have already come together. This is a non-traditional,
grassroots, bottom-up campaign. And it’s dealing with an
issue that touches all of us, whether you marched with Dr.
King, whether you remember when they did not have voting
rights, whether you are of my generation where we benefited
from the voting rights and now those rights are being taken
away or whether you’re from the current generation of
college students who have been attacked and trying to be
disenfranchised because they won’t allow them to use a
college ID.
Definitely with an
historical approach, we have from like the Reverend Dr. Otis
Moss, a national civil rights leader who was with Dr. King
saying to me that he not only wants to dedicate his time to
this when he doesn’t have to do it, but also be one of the
original petitioners and stand up for this. So we’ve got
those kinds of people together because we’re in a state of
emergency. And so I thought it was really important that we
kick it off standing together and that our allies stand with
us, just like white abolitionists stood with Harriet Tubman
and just as other allies stood with Dr. King to get the
civil rights movement going.
Perryman:
Do we have any allies outside of the black community and why
do you think now is the time? And are we ready?
Reece:
Well the time is definitely now. The Voting Rights Act of
1965 has been attacked. When I was a college student at
Grambling State University, I never could understand why I
would have to worry about the Voting Rights Act being
renewed. And I remember one of my elders telling me, “Oh,
they would never be crazy enough to touch the Voting Rights
Act.” And so, we are in a state of emergency at a time when
the Voting Rights Act and voter rights are under attack on a
daily basis, even in my own district. They are trying to
move the Board of Elections from downtown Cincinnati out to
an area where only one bus per day goes. So the time is
definitely now and that’s why we have to move quickly. There
is legislation to suppress voting being introduced in the
Ohio General Assembly at least once a week and they have the
votes there to sign these bad bills into law. The only way
to stop this hemorrhaging is to go to the Constitution.
That’s why we’re going to the Constitution to put something
in place where they can’t play political football with our
voting rights. So the answer to your question, is that we
are in a state of emergency as it relates to voting rights
so the time is definitely now.
Perryman:
But do you feel …
Reece:
As it relates to other allies, we have - - we just got an
endorsement by Freedom Ohio. We have an endorsement by the
Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies across the
state and those agencies not only are in urban areas, but,
are often in the rural areas. Another two endorsements have
come forward that we didn’t even ask for. There are a few
inter-faith alliances across the state that are interested
in supporting this and endorsing this of different faiths,
black and white clergy. And so, there will be a number of
other organizations as we reach out. We are going in the
right direction and we’re doing it at a grassroots level.
It’s non-traditional because it is the first time when this
type issue would be instituted, kicked-off and filed by
African Americans.
Perryman:
And that’s what I’m trying to get at I guess. The
African-American community has a difficult time showing up
for non-presidential year elections. So again, by this being
a grassroots effort, is the black community ready for such
an undertaking?
Reece:
There were a lot of folks in the last presidential election,
in my district and throughout the state, who felt that we
had made history in 2008 and that President Obama had 2012
in the bag. However, when the voter intimidation billboards
went up it became more personal for people. They weren’t
just voting for the president. They were now coming out and
voting for themselves. Grandma was getting the whole family
out to vote and, as you see from the political vote, there
was a larger turnout of African Americans in the last
presidential election than the first one in ’08 and the
African-American turnout was the highest of any other ethnic
group to vote. I can remember the time when people would say
that African Americans would never be the number one ethnic
group to vote.
So the question to can we
do it, the answer is yes! And I believe that this year
African Americans have an extra push to come out and vote in
a midterm election because now they’re coming out to vote
for themselves. And it is an issue that doesn’t only affect
African Americans. This is an issue that will help all of
Ohio because it puts voting rights in the Constitution. The
Ohio Voter’s Bill of Rights initiative puts the rules in the
Constitution so that everyone can understand and it protects
voting as a fundamental right.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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