Jennings students learn about voting – and voter suppression

Jennings eighth-grader Roland Brandy was denied the right to cast his vote at the mock polling place on August 18 at Jennings High School. But Brandy immediately contested that decision.

“If they made a mistake, I believe I still have the right to vote,” Brandy began, but he was cut off.

“Son, you don’t have the right,” said attorney Pamela Meanes, of The St. Louis (MO) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated and the voting activity’s hostess. “I could give three-fourths of a person right now. Move along, please.”

But Brandy didn’t back down: “I believe I have the right to freedom of speech.”

“No, you don’t,” Meanes said, before turning to the auditorium of about 120 middle-school students. “And that’s why we had Selma, because people said, ‘We are tired and we’re not taking it anymore.’”

Then, Meanes gave Brandy a big hug on stage for standing his ground.

A number of other students were also denied the right to vote at the Voting Matters Workshop held for Jennings junior high students. The workshop’s purpose was to explore voting-suppression laws from the past and a proposed constitutional amendment that is currently on the November 8 ballot.

Meanes worked with Jennings school counselor Kay Gage to put on the workshop. The morning started with a panel discussion about the Voting Rights Act, with Judge Judy Draper, attorney Kimberly Turner and State Rep. Sharon Pace.

Draper explained that African-American men were legally given the right to vote in 1870, but in actuality they were intimidated and banned from voting. Some polling places would make up ridiculous tests for blacks who wanted to register to vote, such as reciting the entire U.S. Constitution, Draper said.

In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference made Selma, Alabama, the focus of its efforts to register black voters in the South. That March, protesters attempting to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were met with violent resistance by state and local authorities.

“When educators tell you don't take this lightly, it's because people were killed,” Draper said. “Their suffering was not in vain.”

In August of 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed. However, the fight is not over, speakers said. Constitutional Amendment 6, which is on the November 8 ballot in Missouri, would require citizens to present a state-issued voter ID at polling sites. This creates a barrier to voting for many seniors, students, low-income people and minorities to vote, they said. Already, 16 states have passed voter photo ID laws.

These laws started popping up after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2013 that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed in current times. This section had prevented states from creating new laws that would restrict minorities.

“When section 5 was taken away, states began passing strategic laws to suppress the vote,” Turner said. “Now states are doing what they were trying to do before 1965. Your vote is your power. It's going to be up to us to take the stand like in Selma and continue to fight for our right to vote.”

Mock debate 

Links Inc. also held a mock debate between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (played by attorney Kathi Davis), Republican nominee Donald Trump (Steve Madleman), Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson (Craig Yugawa) and Green Party’s Jill Stein (attorney Heather J. Hays).

Madleman came out with a golden Trump-like toupee that sent the children in hysterics. The adults in the room were laughing as Clinton and Trump started dramatically circling each other, re-enacting the debate at Washington University. The students were allowed to ask the candidates questions, which included issues of affordable housing, gun violence and police brutality.

One girl asked Clinton, “If you become president, do you feel you can stop the violence and make our country a better place?” A boy asked Trump, “How do you honestly feel about the black communities and all our troubles?”

KMOX’s Carol Daniel and Missouri Supreme Court Justice George Draper moderated the debate. The Supreme Court judge said he strongly believes in participating in voter education programs, particularly ones that educate students about voting barriers of the past.

“I think they asked intelligent questions,” George Draper said. “Oftentimes, students are not tuned into the overall issues. Their questions showed that they have been paying attention.”

After the debate, 76 percent of the students – which represented the number of registered voters in Jennings who voted in the 2012 presidential election – were able to approach the polling booths with voter registration cards. The booths were run by volunteers from the St. Louis County NAACP, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. Omicron Theta Omega Chapter.

Half of the students were turned away for often-silly excuses the poll workers came up with, such as not knowing their names.

At the end of the morning, civil-rights attorney Denise Lieberman asked students how they felt about being turned away. The students booed. Lieberman drove home the importance of getting their loved ones out to vote on November 8 and voting themselves in the future. She works with the Advancement Project to fight voter photo ID laws and ballot initiatives across the country.

“This is dangerous,” Lieberman said of the laws, “and it is about power. It is about your power. Why do you think throughout history people have made it harder for certain segments of the population to weaken your power? Because they don’t want to hear what you have to say.”

She added, “But they can’t take it unless we let them.”