#HumorHelpsDemocracy

Signers … above

The “Mayflower Compact” was signed on 11 November 1620 onboard the Mayflower shortly after she came to anchor off Provincetown Harbor. The Pilgrims had obtained permission from English authorities to settle in Virginia, whose northern border at the time extended up to what is now New York. The Pilgrims had originally intended to settle near the mouth of the Hudson River, but due to dangerous shoals and a near shipwreck on their attempt to head south, they decided instead to plant themselves outside the bounds of the Virginia Company patent–which caused some “mutinous speeches” amongst some of the passengers. The Mayflower Compact was an attempt to establish a temporary, legally-binding form of self-government until such time as the Company could get formal permission from the Council of New England. This formal permission came in the form of the Pierce Patent of 1621.

The original Mayflower Compact has been lost, perhaps falling victim to Revolutionary War looting. The text was first published in London in 1622 in A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceeding of the English Plantation Settled at Plymouth in New England. A copy of it is found in William Bradford’s handwritten history, Of Plymouth Plantation, made about 1630. And Nathaniel Morton, secretary for Plymouth Colony, published it, along with the earliest known list of the signers, in his history, New England’s Memorial, published in 1669. A list of signers is also found in Thomas Prince’s 1736 book, Chronological History of New England; and Thomas Hutchinson published a list of signers in 1767 as well. It is uncertain if they had access to the original, or were basing their list of signers off Nathaniel Morton’s.

The following is an image of the original handwritten page of Governor William Bradford’s history Of Plymouth Plantation. This is followed by an exact, line-by-line transcription. Spelling and punctuation have not been modernized.

mayflowerhistory.com

Washington, D.C. has more residents than the states of Vermont and Wyoming, yet it has no Congressional representation—a basic tenet of our democracy.

Voter suppression is a grave injustice throughout the country, but nowhere is it more explicit than in D.C. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have no real representation in a government that dictates their local laws, courts, and budget.

D.C.’s mayor Muriel Bowser calls this lack of representation and local control a disgrace, saying: “We are not asking for a handout—we are demanding our fundamental rights as American citizens, and the rights for which many of our residents have fought and died.”
Why haven’t we rectified this injustice? Well, it’s no coincidence that D.C. is 50% Black. This is classic voter suppression, and modern-day colonialism, which specifically marginalizes people of color.

DC Residents are:
50% Black & majority people of color.
More populous than Wyoming and Vermont, and close in population to 6 other states.
Overwhelmingly in support of statehood (86% of voters voted in favor in a 2016 referendum)
Include 30,000 active duty military members and veterans—but don’t even have a vote about whether we can enter into war.
After the end of slavery, formerly enslaved Black people fled to D.C., because its proximity to the federal government meant increased voting rights. Many Black people ran for office, and it became the Blackest city in America. In reaction, 200 years ago, racist members of Congress denied suffrage to D.C. residents, explicitly noting that they did so because D.C. was primarily Black.

Finally, D.C. statehood is getting the national attention it deserves. In September 2019, the House Oversight Committee held the first hearing on the issue in over 25 years, and Democratic federal officials have come out to overwhelmingly support it.
However, the old paternalistic rhetoric that D.C.’s Black residents were “unfit to govern” themselves, which led to stripping D.C. residents of their rights, is still in use today—by members of Congress who claim D.C. shouldn’t become a state because it can’t govern itself.

That’s why we have to come together as a country and prioritize D.C. statehood as a top civil rights issue.
Please sign the petition now to tell your elected leaders at all levels of government: We need to ensure D.C. residents get a voice in their government.

D.C. residents deserve the same rights every other American has. Instead, they:
Experience taxation without representation—paying more per capita in federal taxes than any other state.
Have one non-voting delegate in the House, but no voting Representatives or Senators that represent their interests.
Have long fought for their right to vote and for “home rule”—self-governance, or control over their local affairs.
Only won the right to vote for President in 1961.
Lack control of their own local laws.

Our Message to All U.S. government & community leaders:

Most Americans don’t know this outrageous fact: The 710,000 residents of Washington, D.C. are second-class citizens who lack equal Congressional representation.
This voter disenfranchisement is a racist affront to our democracy and our country’s struggles for civil and human rights. It’s past time to right this historic wrong by making D.C. a state.
Come out publicly in support of D.C. statehood. We need people across the country to raise awareness about and prioritize fixing this undemocratic injustice. D.C. residents deserve a voice in Congress and control over their own local laws.

Have been blocked by Congress from the implementation of laws D.C. has already passed with overwhelming local support, including: publicly subsidized abortion for low-income women, recreationally legal marijuana, assisted suicide, gun control laws, needle exchange programs in the midst of an HIV epidemic—all laws that disproportionately support D.C.’s residents of color.
Can’t control their own courts—instead, D.C.’s criminal justice system is operated by federal prosecutors appointed by the President.

Resource: actionnetwork.org

President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the Civil Works Administration on November 8, 1933, and put one of the architects of the New Deal Harry L. Hopkins, in charge of the short-term agency. Roosevelt was convinced that jobs were much better for everyone than cash handouts.

The Civil Works Administration was a short-lived U.S. job creation program established by the New Deal during the Great Depression to rapidly create manual labor jobs for millions of unemployed workers. The jobs were merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter of 1933-34. The unemployment rate during that time was around 24.9 percent. The Civil Works Administration was a project created under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). The Civil Works Administration created construction jobs, mainly improving or constructing buildings and bridges. It ended on March 31, 1934, after spending $200 million a month and giving jobs to 4 million people.

The Civil Works Administration’s workers laid 12 million feet of sewer pipe and built or improved 255,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, 3,700 playgrounds, and nearly 1,000 airports (not to mention building 250,000 outhouses still badly needed in rural America).The program was praised by liberal Republican Alf Landon, who later ran against Roosevelt in the 1936 election.

An example of the effectiveness the Civil Works Administration is one county’s accomplishments: in less than five months, from November 1933 to March 1934. Grand Forks County, North Dakota put 2,392 unemployed workers on its payroll at a cost of about $250,000. When the Civil Works Administration began in eastern Connecticut, it could hire only 480 workers out of 1,500 who registered for jobs. Projects undertaken included work on city utility systems, public buildings, parks, and roads.

Rural areas profited, with most labor being directed to roads and community schools. Civil Works Administration officials gave preference to veterans with dependents, but considerable political favoritism determined which North Dakotans got jobs. The Civil Works Administration ended due to a lack of funding. It was replaced with the Works Progress Administration also headed by Harry Hopkins. The Works Progress Administration would have long-term value for the society, in addition to short-term benefits for the unemployed.

Photo: Workmen clean and paint the gold dome of Denver Capitol as part of the Civil Works Administration (U.S.

resource: peoplesworld.org

In 1967, he became the first black elected mayor of a major American city.

Stokes was born in Cleveland, the son of Louise (Stone) and Charles Stokes, a laundryman who died when Carl was three years old. He and his brother, politician Louis Stokes, were raised by their mother in Cleveland’s first federally funded housing project for the poor, Outhwaite Homes.

Stokes was a good student but dropped out of high school in 1944. He worked briefly at Thompson Products (later TRW), then joined the U.S. Army at age 18. After his discharge in 1946, Stokes returned to Cleveland and earned his high school diploma in 1947. He attended several colleges before earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 1954. He graduated from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1956 and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1957. While studying law he was a probation officer. For four years, he served as assistant prosecutor and became partner a law firm.
He was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1962, where he served three terms. By the late 1960s, he was able to carve out a district that could elect him to Congress, but deferred to his brother Louis Stokes who represented Cleveland in the US House of Representatives for three decades. Stokes narrowly lost a bid for mayor of Cleveland in 1965. His victory two years later drew national attention, as he was the first black mayor of one of the ten biggest cities in the United States.

From 1983 to 1994, he served as municipal judge in Cleveland. President Bill Clinton then appointed him U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Seychelles. Stokes was awarded 12 honorary degrees, numerous civic awards, and represented the United States on numerous goodwill trips abroad by request of the White House. In 1970, the National League of Cities voted him its first black president-elect.

He was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus while serving as Ambassador to the Seychelles and placed on medical leave. He returned to Cleveland and died at the Cleveland Clinic.

resource: blackthen.com

Pensacola News Journal