Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is a comic book villain of voter suppression.
No, on second thought, that’s actually offensive to comic book villains, as they usually have nuance and finesse.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is a throwback to an old South that is blatantly racist and doesn’t give AF who knows it. Kemp straight stole the governorship from American shero Stacey Abrams. And, after Abrams helped turn Georgia blue and deliver two Democratic Senators, Kemp did what most white kids do when they are losing, he took his football back and changed the rules of the game.
On Thursday, Kemp—surrounded by a bunch of white men—signed sweeping Republican-sponsored legislation that suppresses the fuck out of the Black vote and basically gives Kemp and his boys greater control over elections.
“Among highlights, the law requires a photo ID in order to vote absentee by mail, after more than 1.3 million Georgia voters used that option during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also cuts the time people have to request an absentee ballot and limits where ballot drop boxes can be placed and when they can be accessed,” the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Kemp ran to sign that bullshit just two hours after it was passed by a vote of 100-75 in the state House and 34-20 in the state Senate.
“We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we’ve seen since the Jim Crow era,” state Democratic Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler told the Sun-Times.
State Rep. Park Cannon wanted Kemp to sign Jim Crow 2.0 in front of the people so she knocked on the governor’s door when he was livestreaming the signing. I guess you can figure out what happened next, but Georgia state troopers arrested Cannon, an Atlanta Democrat, dragging her through the Capitol and into a police car, while the person committing the real crime was safe in his office.
Cannon was charged with obstruction of law enforcement and “disrupting General Assembly sessions, according to the Georgia State Patrol and released on bond late Thursday,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
“She knew he was signing a bill that would affect all Georgians—why would he hide behind closed doors? This isn’t a monarchy,” Tamara Stevens, an activist who was there when Cannon was arrested, told AJC. “You have a woman of color fighting for the rights of Georgians and they arrested her for knocking on the door because she wanted to witness our governor sign the bill.”
Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is also the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, reminded AJC that violent insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol avoided arrest on Jan. 6, yet a Georgia state legislator was arrested for knocking on a door in her workplace.
“Today is a very sad day for the state of Georgia,” he said. “What we have witnessed today is a desperate attempt to lock out and squeeze the people out of their own democracy.”