With the Nov. 8th election fast approaching, Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., Bishop Tavis Grant, national executive director for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and investigative journalist Greg Palast, who busted out Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s voter suppression scheme, are fighting hard to end voter suppression and to increase Black voter turnout.
On October 11th, Palast screened his film, “Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman,” at a standing-room only premiere held at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Palast also revealed why Governor Kemp, who is running against Stacey Abrams, is against critical race theory. He opposes critical race theory calling it a “divisive” and “anti-American agenda.”
The film portrays Governor Kemp as the “hitman” who Palast says has been reportedly suppressing the Black vote for a long time. He says Governor Kemp’s family history is proof of a pattern and practice of Black voter suppression.
Palast told the Chicago Crusader Governor Kemp does not want anyone to know that it was his great, great, grandfather, James Habersham, who reportedly brought Africans to Georgia when Georgia was a free state at the time and that is how the Kemp family became wealthy. Palast said Governor Kemp does not want his family’s slave legacy in U.S. history books.
“Georgia was a free state,” Palast said. “It was one of the only territories on the continent that prohibited slavery, but Kemp’s family got the King to overrule the locals and he gave the King a piece of the action. That is where Kemp’s wealth came from, not his cockamamie story that he is a self-made businessman.
“He ain’t self-made nothing. He is a guy who’s still spending money created by enslaved Africans. That’s the truth. He would bury it, and we are going to expose it in this film Vigilante: Vote Suppression Hitman,” Palast told the Chicago Crusader. Palast vowed to show his film nationwide, particularly in the battleground states, like Georgia.
When asked about the origin of Governor Kemp’s wealth, Palast said it was with rice.
“They brought Africans from the African rice coast. Do you think people from Britain had any idea how to grow rice? It was the Africans who had the cutting-edge technology on agriculture at that time.
“The Africans were the ones who brought over the rice-planting technology to the American South. That was the original sort of wealth before cotton. You can’t separate the suppression of history from the suppression of the vote,” he stated.
Palast explained that on March 28, 1871, Representative Samuel Shellabarger of Ohio introduced H.R. 320 known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was designed to eliminate extralegal violence and protect the civil and political rights of four million freed slaves.
The bill authorized the President to intervene in the former rebel states that attempted to deny “any person or any class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws.” “At one time, our federal government actually thought it was illegal to stop Black people from voting.”
Palast, retired Northeastern University professor Bob Starks, Cook County Clerk Karen A. Yarbrough and many others blasted Governor Kemp for his documented voter suppression schemes, including his signing of the Election Integrity Act 2021, known as SB202, which criminalizes anyone giving food or water to anyone standing in line to vote.
They also criticized him for remaining his office as Secretary of State while running against Abrams in 2016. Governor Kemp defeated Abrams by 50.2 percent avoiding a runoff. However, for the election on November 8, 2022, Abrams has raised $85 million to Governor Kemp’s $60 million.
Palast believes his film will help increase Black voter turnout enough to push her across the victory line.
Bishop Grant said the film “gives us a real view of what voter suppression looks like and the history behind it. It should provoke a great deal of disgust, and yet, determination in those of us who fight for civil rights, voter rights and human rights every day.”
Grant said the film highlights what Reverend Jackson has been doing and that is fighting for the right for everyone to vote and the need for a constitutional right to vote.
On Monday, October 10th, Reverend Jackson joined attorneys Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, and her co-chairman Daryl Jones, on a Get Out The Vote (GOTV) votercade that began at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and ended up at the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners voter supersite. They were promoting early voting.
Reverend Jackson told WVON’s Matt McGill, “The right to vote was protected by the federal government, and now it’s back to states’ right again. Voter suppression is a real big deal. We are trying to get all youth 18 and over to register and vote.”
He went to say, “To be on a jury, you must be a registered voter.” Reverend Jackson referred to the all-white jury who found the two white men involved with the murder of Emmett Till innocent.
