News — america

Jamaica was once the world's leading exporter of bauxite, which is the ore from which aluminum is made, but decades of mining have taken a toll on the land and the people. With reserves depleted, the government is now pushing to move mining operations into the most ecologically sensitive part of the island known as Cockpit Country. The people of Cockpit Country fought off the British in the 1700s, and now they're conjuring the warrior spirit of their ancestors to take that fight to the mining companies. The Jamaican government seems to be in support of this. What do you think?

 Jholie Moussa, a 16-year-old African American girl, went missing in 2018. For two weeks, the police insisted that she left of her own free will, a run away. No further action was taken. Her body was later found in the woods. This is one example of hundreds of cases of black kids going missing and not much being done to address the case. Additionally, the press is more likely to highlight cases of white children going missing than black kids. Even though African-Americans making up significantly less of the US population than white people, black kids are much more likely to go missing than their white counterparts. What do you think?

The Tampa Bay Race Riot was one of dozens of race riots that occurred in U.S. cities during the spring and summer of 1967. The riot took place between June 11 and June 14, 1967 after nineteen-year-old Martin Chambers who was a suspect in the robbery of a camera store in Tampa, was killed by the Tampa police. Chambers was seen running from the police near Nebraska and Harrison Streets and was shot in the back by Police Officer James Calvert. He later died. Following the incident, a riot broke out along Central Avenue.

On the afternoon of June 11 Officer Calvert pursued Chambers and two other young men who he suspected had just robbed a local photo supply store. Calvert chase Chambers and shot him, claiming that he would not stop when ordered to do so. According to newspaper accounts Calvert said he aimed for Chambers’s shoulder but missed. When news of the shooting spread around the Tampa Black community, Black residents began a peaceful protest in the afternoon that turned to rioting and looting that night along Central Avenue, the heart of Tampa’s local Black community. Often called the “Harlem of the South” because of its many nightclubs that hosted top Black entertainers from across the nation, Central Avenue also was home to more than 100 stores, shops, and restaurants.

During the riot, arsonists specifically targeted white-owned Central Avenue businesses while a crowd of 400 rocked an occupied police car yelling “Kill them” until police reinforcements arrived. Another 100 people surrounded the Tampa municipal bus barn and threatened to burn it to the ground.

The Tampa Bay Riot lasted three days. On June 14, 1967, Florida Governor Claude Kirk Jr. ordered 500 Florida National Guardsmen, 235 Florida High Patrol troopers, and 250 local law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions to Tampa to help Tampa and St. Petersburg police. The next day the violence ended.

A two-day investigation by the Hillsborough County District Attorney’s office declared the shooting was justified. Florida State Attorney General Paul Antinori would also claim after his office investigated the incident, that the use of deadly force against unarmed Chambers was justified because he was a known felon evading arrest. Although Chambers never experienced a trial for the camera store robbery because of his death at the hands of police, Antinori asserted that people who broke the law had to accept the risk that law enforcement would use force.

Farai Chideya is an American author, radio host, and Pop and Politics radio series producer and host. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to an American mother and a Zimbabwean father on July 27, 1969. Chideya explores and focuses her work on race relations, politics, and labor economics. She began to host her own podcast in September 2020, Our Body Politics, which highlights the experiences of women of color and how major political events and decisions impact their lives.

Chideya grew up in Baltimore’s Forest Park neighborhood and attended Harford Heights Elementary School’s gifted program. She later attended Western High School graduating in 1986. Four years later Chideya graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. During her time at Harvard, she wrote movie reviews for the Harvard Daily Crimson and received an internship at Newsweek‘s Boston office after graduation. She then worked for MTV News and CNN as a political analyst during the 1996 presidential race.

In 2006, Chideya became the host of NPR’s News and Notes. Her series included investigative stories on homelessness and drugs in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, interviews of then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama, and First Lady Laura Bush during the 2008 election. She previously worked for ABC News, CNN, and Oxygen Network, and made appearances on MSNBC and Real Time with Bill Maher.

Chideya and has also received multiple awards and honors, including a National Education Reporting Award, a North Star News Prize, and an award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association for coverage of AIDS. Chideya received a Knight Foundation Fellow from Stanford University in 2001 and Foreign Press Center Fellowship in Japan in 2002.

She released three nonfiction books related to race and ethnic studies: Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans (1995), Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters; The Color of Our Future (1999) and a new version of Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans (2004). Chideya also released her first novel, Kiss the Sky, in May 2009. The book follows a former black rockstar struggling to build a new career and highlights the Black Rock movement in New York.

During her career as an award-winning author, writer, professor, and lecturer, Farai has merged media, technology, politics, and race into her work. She is now a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. She was also a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in the spring of 2012.

The Battle of Nashville occurred on December 15-16, 1864 south of Nashville, Tennessee. The battle, between approximately 22,000 Union troops led by Major General George Henry Thomas and 40,000 Confederate troops led by Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, was considered a major Union victory in the Western Theater of the Civil War (the area west of the Appalachian Mountains). It was also significant because African American Union troops played a crucial role in the Union victory.

African American Union soldiers served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiments. The USCT were eight regiments—the 12th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 44th, and 100th—all units of the U.S. Colored Infantry led by white officers. An estimated 13,000 USCT soldiers participated in the Battle of Nashville, the largest number of black soldiers on any battlefield so far in the Civil War.

On December 15, 1864, the 13th USCT and the 2nd Colored Brigade (three regiments of black troops) were ordered to move in position for an assault on a Confederate battery position along the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad near Nolensville Pike. The Confederates who expected a Union attack, positioned their artillery to open fire on the USCT brigade. Confederate troops also opened fire on the 13th USCT but they were guarded by earthworks. The 13th USCT used the earthworks as shelter as they exchange gunfire with Confederate forces. The 20th Indiana Battery arrived to give support to the 13th USCT men and with those reinforcements, they forced the Confederates to pull their cannons back.

The next day, Union Colonel Charles R. Thompson received orders to take his 2nd Colored Brigade to join General Thomas J. Woods’ 4th Corps. The 13th USCT along with the 12th and 100th USCT arrived at Peach Orchard Hill where the Confederates immediately opened fire at them but none of the USCT took any losses. General Wood told Thompson that he would attack the Confederate position at Overton Hill and requested three USCT regiments to support his left flank. Around 3:00 p.m., the Union troops began their attack. Thompson placed the 100th and 12th USCT in front and use the 13th as support. The 12th encountered a dense thicket which slowed their advance. Meanwhile the 100th USCT came upon several fallen trees that slowed their advance as well. Both regiments faced heavy fire from the Confederate troops occupying Overton Hill.

Colonel Thompson ordered the 12th USCT to take shelter to regroup. The 100th USCT and 4th Corps attempted to advance but were pushed back by the Confederates. The 13th USCT, however pushed past the 2nd Brigade and continued to advance up the hill while subject to withering fire from Confederate troops. With no support from the white Union troops or other black regiments, who fell back from their positions, the 13th USCT continued to storm the Confederate earthworks. The regiment took heavy casualties but failed to take Overton Hill. Despite that failure, Confederate troops were forced to withdraw.

The Union Army would go on to win the Battle of Nashville and end the Army of Tennessee (Confederates) as a fighting force in Tennessee. The battle, however, cost the 13TH USCT dearly. The 900-soldier regiment lost four white officers and 55 enlisted men killed along with 4 white officers and 165 enlisted men wounded. Their bravely in the battle however was acknowledged by their white counterparts and officers alike. General George H. Thomas, the Union commander who was a Virginian by birth and who previously harbored doubts about the black soldiers under his command, rode across the battlefield seeing the bodies of black Union soldiers and white Confederate soldiers lying together, said to his officers, “Gentlemen, the question is settled, negro soldiers will fight.”

On September 16, 1928, the Okeechobee Hurricane or Hurricane San Felipe Segundo, one of the most devastating tropical cyclones in Florida’s weather history and one of the ten most intense hurricanes to hit the United States mainland, came ashore near Palm Beach, Florida. It began as a tropical depression somewhere between West Africa’s Cape Verde and Senegal but by the time it crossed the Atlantic Ocean it was the first recorded Category 5 hurricane in the country’s history with winds at 140 miles per hour. The Okeechobee Hurricane came without the warning systems available today for such storms and state and local officials were barely prepared for the catastrophe. The impact of the storm was made worse by the ineffective communication and political posturing of Republican President Calvin Coolidge and Democratic Governor Doyle Elam Carlton, Sr.

The City of Palm Beach had by that point developed a reputation as the residential area of the wealthy and famous. West of Palm Beach into Palm Beach County there were extensive agricultural enterprises that specialized in sugarcane production. This labor-intensive crop depended on poor communities comprised primarily Bahamian migrant farm workers and African American sharecroppers, for labor.

While the Okeechobee Hurricane impacted all in Palm Beach County, the vast majority of the deaths from the storm came in the Bahamian and African American communities. Many of these people perished from the thrush of water rising as high as 20 feet and destroying weakened levees and dikes. Between 1,800 and 4,000 men, women, and children died and it was estimated that 75% of them were Black making this one of the deadliest natural disasters to impact African Americans and Afro-Bahamians. Officially there were 69 white victims and 674 black victims. This deadly hurricane caused more than $100 million in damage but the county and other local governments did not have resources to help the survivors or deemed them less important than the wealthy coastal population which was mostly white.

Blacks who survived were often forced to recover the bodies of relatives and friends who died in contaminated waters. Most of the black survivors were not even allowed to bury their family members on the soil of the white landowners where they worked and lived as sharecroppers. This hurricane revealed institutional racism and in particular how unfairly allocated governmental resources were held back from local black families.

While white residents buried their relatives and friends with dignity in coffins in local cemeteries or rested them peacefully on their properties, deceased blacks were stacked on top of each other and the corpses burned ostensibly to prevent the spread of disease. Local authorities then authorities bulldozed the scorched bodies, burying them in makeshift mass graves on lands that were later zoned for industrial use.

In 2000, the city of West Palm Beach, recognizing what callous disregard of black life and lack of respect for the dignity of the black deceased, purchased the main mass burial site in 2000, and eight years later, placed a historical marker there in acknowledgment of what had happened and to restore some dignity to those who suffered and perished in 1928.

Jamal Derek Jr. Francique, a 28-year-old father of two who was active in the Mississauga music scene, was gunned down by a Peel Regional Police officer on January 7, 2020. He died in hospital three days later.

Details of the circumstances surrounding Francique’s death are scant and contradictory. On the evening of January 7, plainclothes officers investigating drug activity at a housing complex on Winston Churchill Boulevard, south of Eglinton Avenue and Southampton Drive in Mississauga, Ontario, fired multiple shots into Francique’s vehicle while he was driving. The officers had intended to arrest Francique who was a “person of interest” but, as Constable Sarah Patten told reporters at the scene, Francique had allegedly driven towards the officers and so they opened fire on his car. According to supporters of the slain man’s family, Francique had been shot in the back of the head. A cellphone video taken by a nearby resident shows several Peel Regional Police officers gathered around Francique after he had been pulled out of his vehicle. An officer can be seen kicking the fatally wounded man while he lay on the ground.

Francique’s grieving family wants to know what happened. They do not understand why the investigation has taken so long or why it took eight police officers to arrest one man. The Special Investigations Unit (SIU), a police watchdog that has been accused of holding a pro-police bias, issued a report on January 20, 2021, in which it said there were no reasonable grounds to charge the officer who shot Francique in front of his parents’ home. Knia Singh, the lawyer for the family, says the report contains major inconsistencies that demonstrate that the SIU does not conduct thorough and accurate investigations.

The story of Jamal Francique’s death might have remained unknown were it not for worldwide protests against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. The Peel Regional Police shooting of D’Andre Campbell in Brampton, Ontario, and the police intervention that resulted in the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto have sparked a growing concern in Canada about systemic racism and police brutality. On June 13, 2020, several hundred people attended a “Justice for Jamal” vigil in Mississauga to honor him and to shine a light on his case. Author-journalist Desmond Cole addressed the gathering: “Everywhere we look in this country, it’s the same story with police and Black and Indigenous people, and we are tired. But we are not defeated by any means.”

As one would expect, Oklahoma’s Republican governor Kevin Stitt was on the planning committee that is putting together the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the unforgettable Tulsa Race Massacre which occurred in 1921. But Stitt was kicked out of the committee this week for signing into law, a bill meant to prevent different aspects of Critical Race Theory.

Stitt’s earlier addition could be read as a respectful nod to authority as well as to bipartisan contribution considering that the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission includes both Republicans and Democrats. Oklahoma, a deeply red state, last voted for a Democratic governor in 2002. Nonetheless, Stitt’s inclusion had been “purely ceremonial” according to the commission yet, his assent to the bill was thought to inimical to the spirit of the commemoration.

A statement on Friday said “[T]he 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commissioners met Tuesday and agreed through consensus to part ways with Governor Stitt.” No elected officials were involved in the decision, the statement also said.

Even though the commissioners were “disheartened”, they were thankful of Stitt’s contributions thus far.

While Connecticut and California have passed bills embracing certain aspects of Critical Race Theory to be taught in schools, other states such as Idaho are looking to ban CRT or aspects of it in schools. The division over where you can and cannot learn CRT over the next few years is bound to be very political.

Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is better understood as a lens with which to look at the world rather than a field of studies or a defined subject area. CRT assumes that American social and political life, or the social and political life of western society in general, are rooted in suppositions that also gave birth to racial consciousness.

By this, CRT proponents such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell opine that western society is a necessarily white supremacist, in the sense that western society was structured out of the humanity of those who shared whiteness. The structures these people of whiteness built were meant to perpetuate their kind and defend their ways.

The massacre

Sometimes known as the Tulsa race riot, it was a two-day massacre that happened when a white mob attacked and destroyed the properties of the black inhabitants living in Greenwood, Tulsa which was at that time the most affluent African-American community in the United States. It was even known as the “Black Wall Street” as it was home to highly successful and profitable black-owned businesses.

The riot was spurred after a 19-year old black shoeshiner by the name of Dick Rowland was accused of raping a 17-year old white female elevator operator by the name of Sarah Page. It is thought this accusation was caused by Rowland slipping and falling on Page. The white woman initially refused to press charges.

Bu the incident was reported by a white-owned local newspaper calling for his lynching. Rowland was processed and taken to court on May 31, 1921, however, tensions between the white mob who went to the courthouse to lynch Rowland and the black residents who were also around to ensure his safety escalated into a 24-hour-long armed confrontation.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ordered a White South Carolina restaurant manager to pay $546,000 as restitution to a Black man with intellectual disabilities after he forced him to work at an eatery under his management for five years without pay.

The recent ruling comes after a district court initially ordered 56-year-old Bobby Paul Edwards to pay $273,000 to John Christopher Smith in unpaid wages and overtime compensation after he reached a plea deal with authorities in 2019, The Washington Post reported. Edwards, who ran the J&J Cafeteria in Conway, was also sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of forced labor.

However, an April 21 ruling by the appellate court determined the district court “had erred” in not calculating the initial amount based on federal labor laws – meaning Smith was actually entitled to $546,000 or twice the amount. Smith, who worked at the restaurant from 2009 to 2014 without any remuneration, was also subjected to physical and racial abuse by Edwards during that period. Smith was also reportedly forced to work for over 100 hours every week and was not entitled to any day-offs.

“When an employer fails to pay those amounts (regular and overtime pay), the employee suffers losses, which includes the loss of the use of that money during the period of delay,” the ruling determined.

Smith, 43, started working at the eatery as a dishwasher and table busser in 1990 at the age of 12. And though he initially did not have any issues with the previous restaurant managers, things started to go south when Edwards took over in 2009. With the now-convicted Edwards in charge, Smith was denied his salary and was treated without any respect for human decency.

Edwards forced the Black worker to move into an apartment that was infested with roaches, The Washington Post reported. Smith’s attorneys said the apartment, which belonged to Edwards, was “sub-human,” “deplorable” and “harmful to human health.” Besides that, a Department of Justice report also stated Edwards subjected Smith to physical abuse. This included beating him into submission, whipping him with a belt, knocking him with pots and pans, and at one time, burning him with hot grease. Edwards also prevented Smith from having any contact with his family and threatened to call the police on him.

“Most of the time I felt unsafe, like Bobby could kill me if he wanted,” Smith said, per court documents. “I wanted to get out of that place so bad but couldn’t think about how I could without being hurt.”

Edwards was eventually arrested in 2014 after a lady whose daughter-in-law worked at the restaurant reported him to authorities. Workers at the restaurant were initially hesitant to report Edwards out of fear of retaliation from him.

“For stealing his victim’s freedom and wages, Mr. Edwards has earned every day of his sentence,” U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina Sherri A. Lydon reportedly said after his 2019 sentencing. “The U.S. attorney’s office will not tolerate forced or exploitative labor in South Carolina, and we are grateful to the watchful citizen and our partners in law enforcement who put a stop to this particularly cruel violence.”

Twenty years after the United States launched an ill-advised military offensive in the Middle East, President Joe Biden has announced that American soldiers who number about 2,500 will be pulled out of Afghanistan, a process that started in May and is expected to end in September.

The war in Afghanistan is America’s longest ever and has taken more than 300,000 lives, many of whom have been Afghan civilians. A little over 2,000 American soldiers have also lost their lives. All of these are on top of a collapsed national infrastructure and the cessation of the dreams of hundreds of thousands of young Afghans.

In this year that America begins to walk the talk that has been uttered by all the presidents after George W. Bush., it is important to remember the only congressperson who voted against a joint legislature resolution to give the American president an inexhaustible right to do all that they thought to do militarily in response to the September 11 attacks: Barbara Lee of California’s 13th District.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force was passed on September 18, 2001, exactly a week after the saddest day in modern American history. America was a nation wailing and wondering who its enemies were. The foes had not been absolutely faceless but public opinion succumbed to the impression that the enmity was present and pervasive and its ammunition was imaginably dangerous. What happened was what economist Naomi Klein has called the Shock Doctrine – how governments – or better still, free-market apologists – use natural disasters or attacks as bases to assume far-reaching powers that drastically shifts the tectonics of political culture.

In the case of the United States own shock doctrine after the plane crashes, the industry that made the machines and materials for war was hopeful of a brute American response to September 11. They lobbied power to make war happen. In some including Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney, the military industry could count on men who were the farthest from pacifist.

In all honesty, public sympathies lied with revenge of different sorts and one could make sense of that as a legitimate human response. But what Lee stressed at the time was that American leadership needed to be circumspect lest they cajole the citizenry into irreparable damages. As the sole vote against the bill, Lee said on the floor:

However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. There must be some of us who say, let’s step back for a moment and think through the implications of our actions today-let us more fully understand their consequences. We are not dealing with a conventional war. We cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control. This crisis involves issues of national security, foreign policy, public safety, intelligence gathering, economics, and murder. Our response must be equally multifaceted.

She would go on to criticize in media interviews, the biggest “blank check” ever handed to an American president. The law effectively gave powers to President Bush that no other president before him had had. This legal reality also translated into public spending. Between 2001 and 2003, the year America invaded Iraq, the defense budget budget grew about 30% from $330 billion to $440 billion.

Seeing how things turned out in Afghanistan, it was hard to forget Lee’s protest vote. Yet when she did it, Lee was the object of scorn and contempt. She recently revealed that she received death threats forcing to toughen her personal security. Her patriotism was questioned and was referred to by several unsavory names. Two decades on, she is not gloating but appreciative of the Biden administration’s efforts to return soldiers home.

“Finally, we are beginning to bring our troops home, which we should have done years ago. Taking them out of harm’s way and using diplomatic [means] and diplomacy tools that we to make sure that we do this right,” she told.

“She has stolen the highly prized status of U.S. citizenship.”

“The defendant was not a mere spectator; the defendant personally participated in the killing of men, women and children, merely because they were called Tutsi.”

Those were the words of District Court Judge Stephen J. McAuliffe in July 2013 before sentencing Beatrice Munyenyezi, then 43, to 10 years in prison in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. Munyenyezi was sentenced on two counts of procuring American citizenship unlawfully by lying about her role in the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. McAuliffe also stripped the Rwandan woman of her U.S. citizenship on the day of her conviction.

Munyenyezi was charged in June 2010 and later convicted in March 2012 by a New Hampshire federal jury. The jury said she obtained her U.S. citizenship unlawfully by “misrepresenting material facts to U.S. immigration authorities” after fleeing her home country of Rwanda. According to a statement by the ICE, testimony during the trial disclosed that Munyenyezi concealed her role in the Rwandan genocide, including her involvement in the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), the political party in power before and during the genocide, and its youth wing, the Interahamwe.

The Interahamwe was behind a militia that was heavily involved in the genocide, according to U.S. investigators. “Evidence at trial demonstrated that Munyenyezi, as a member of the Interahamwe, participated, aided and abetted in the persecution and murder of Tutsi people during the 1994 genocide,” ICE wrote.

At least 800,000 people – ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus – were killed in 100 days by Hutu militias during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. More than two million refugees fled Rwanda, generating a humanitarian crisis.

During Munyenyezi’s trial, scores of witnesses testified that throughout the genocide, Munyenyezi would stand on roadblocks outside her home and check identifications to identify Tutsi. She would then hand them over to the Interahamwe militia to be killed. Women were raped before being killed, witnesses said. Munyenyezi once commanded Interahamwe to rape one nun whom she later killed using a pistol, according to investigators.

“The evidence demonstrated that Munyenyezi misrepresented these facts in order to obtain immigration and naturalization benefits. She was ineligible to become a U.S. citizen because of her participation in genocide and murder,” ICE wrote in a statement in 2013.

Munyenyezi served a 10-year sentence in the state of Alabama and had faced deportation. She requested a new trial “based on a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting the government’s ability to strip citizenship from immigrants who lied during the naturalization process,” Associated Press reported. She challenged how the jury was instructed during her trial in federal court in New Hampshire, but a judge ruled that “even if the instruction fell short, the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Last Friday, she was deported to Rwanda after losing her latest court case in March. She was arrested upon arrival in Rwanda, where she faces seven charges related to the 1994 genocide — murder as a genocide crime, conspiracy to commit genocide, planning of the genocide, complicity in genocide, incitement to commit genocide, extermination, and complicity in rape.

Upon her arrival, she was handed over to the Immigrations Office before being delivered to Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), the New Times reported. The RIB said the genocide suspect will be detained at Remera RIB station as investigations continue, before sending her case to prosecution.

In July 1994, months after the Rwandan genocide, Munyenyezi, whose husband played a leadership role in the extremist Hutu militia party, fled to Nairobi, Kenya, with a young daughter. Reports said she gave birth to twin girls there four months later before entering the United States as a refugee. She settled in Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city, and got a job with the city housing authority.

Munyenyezi earned an associate’s degree in college and lived comfortably through mortgages, loans and credit cards. She however filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and had about $400,000 in debt discharged, according to reports.

Meanwhile, her husband, Arsene Ntahobali, and his mother Pauline Nyiramasuhuko were sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for their role in the genocide against the Tutsi.

What has been widely interpreted as unfair election laws aimed at hurting the Black vote in the state of Georgia have now been promulgated despite the protestations of Democrats and election experts in and out of the Peach State.

On Thursday afternoon, Governor Brian Kemp signed the Election Integrity Act of 2021 after both houses of the state legislature, which Republicans control, voted in favor. The days leading up to the legislative decision saw a nationwide interest in what the bill proposed.

A few of the things the law seeks to do has left many concerned. For instance, the Act requires Georgians to get new ID requirements to request mail-in ballots. Formerly, Georgians only had to sign their names. Apart from that, Georgian legislators have now been given power to take control of election operations if any problems at all are reported during an electioneering process.

People waiting in line at at a polling center now will not receive food and drinks from any Samaritan since the practice is now illegal. The law will also allow only a short period of time for early voting.

When the new rules were being signed, State Rep. Park Cannon, a Black Democrat, went to the door of the room at the statehouse where Kemp and other legislators convened. After knocking on the door in continuous protest, Cannon was arrested, handcuffed, and removed from the premises.

She would later tweet: “I am not the first Georgian to be arrested for fighting voter suppression. I’d love to say I’m the last, but we know that isn’t true”.

The new laws have been read as a response to the devastating defeat suffered by Republicans in the 2020 election where for the first time in decades, the two United States senators from the state – Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Black social activist, and Jon Ossof, a Jewish investigative journalist – are Democrats.

President Joe Biden also became the first Democratic candidate for president to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992. The president also added his voice to the critics’ in calling out the new Georgia laws saying they amounted to “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” targeting Black people.