Dare to tell the truth, get attacked.
On Saturday night, the movie American Blackout, which looks at the career of U.S.Representative Cynthia McKinney from Georgia and the historical suppression of black voters in the United States, won a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award for Documentary Films.
On Sunday Cynthia’s front yard had VCR tape all over it, in an obvious reference to the award she received at Sundance.
Cynthia McKinney’s Home Vandalized
Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) found her front yard “toilet papered” with VCR tape Sunday when she returned from promoting her new documentary ‘American Blackout’ at the Sundance Film Festival.. The crime was reported to local police.
Her film ‘American Blackout’ chronicles voting irregularities and supposed disenfranchisement of some African Americans from 2000-2004
Tipped by Susan Hu
This is absurd! The hate act perpetrated against Cynthia is a chilling reminder of a not so distant past where the few minorities who dared to raise their voice had their walls plastered with hate messages.
We have to guard the back of every elected representative who dares to dive into voter disenfranchisement.
It serves US nothing if low income voters are blocked from voting by the dirty tricks of the right
THANK YOU!
And your rant is right on!
this pisses me off like no tomorrow. i have searched and so far for some reason the msm does not deem this newsworthy???? why not??? McKinney is a tireless representative of exposing voter suppression.
this represents how much the issues surrounding transparent elections is a dangerous threat to rove and co.
this isn’t just ‘low income’. it’s blatently racist.
voter disenfranchisement is not an issue we need to address after every election. we have to grow by leaps and bounds between now and november and hopefully implement a plan in place to pay witness by election day in EVERY PRECINCT in the country that is threatened.
there is an undercurrent of racism that keeps otherwise daring activists and politicains from touching this message. this is not a black problem it is all of our problem and rove knows it. he banks on it, that we will not venture into the neighborhoods. that we will marginalize our comrads because its easier to talk till we’re blue in the face converting republicans and ‘moderate dems’ them to have the back of true democratic patriots who have suffered great lengths to be able to vote, in ways many of us cannot even fathom. its not good enough to moan about it, we need a plan. if dean is spending money in every state to empower the dem party, we need to have a voters support group mobilized in every state to find precincts that are vulnerable and have a plan. vulnerable on election day, and vulnerable when they count the ballots. does the democratic party have a plan? do we have a plan for the day after when we know we have been cheated? or do we all just sit around and scream we got ripped off?
When the seething, hate-filled minds of middle America dump your video-tape on the lawn, That’s recognition!
Glad it to read down and find the vandalism was no more then some tape on the lawn. When and where I grew up you could get that treatment without doing anything.
I’m sure she has faced down worse.
But yes, for all you fluffy bunnies, this is America. ‘Nuff said? Now let’s all sing another verse of Kumbaya.
When and where I grew up if your house was tee peed it was almost always by your friends who thought you were getting too big for your britches. Your enemies did much worse. My first thought, after reading down to find that it was only video tapes, was that video tapes have got to be easier to clean up than tee pee, especially after a rain.
It’s sad this happened. But I agree — when the only thing that seething hate filled middle america comes up with to do is dump some video tape on your lawn — its almost a victory.
With everything else going on, it is easy to “overlook” incidents like this, if you are white and not immediately in the cross-hairs of this kind of behavior. It is a chilling reminder of our not so distant American history.
It’s still happening today.
In an unnoticed diary last month, A Nation of Snitches?, I included a few links to some contemporary incidents in Elk Grove, CA, a small community south of Sacramento:
This weekend, a local mosque was vandalized; early reporting was unclear as to whether the woman who did it was mentally unstable, or if it was a hate crime. Synagogues here have been vandalized several times in teh last five years. This isn’t the south or midwest, it’s the freakin’ LEFT COAST! Certainly can’t be unique . . .
to police, much less the news, not unlike crimes of sexual assault, for the victim, the risks of “reporting it” can frequently outweigh other considerations. Obviously, a high-profile individual like Cynthia McKinney, or a “public” religious building like a synagogue or mosque, will be known about by all, but with acts against individuals, the victims usually just wipe it off, patch it (or themselves) up, and try to keep an even lower profile in the future.