This Monday afternoon I, along with a dozen other civil rights and voting rights leaders, joined President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder as we briefed them on our outrage at the Supreme Court's recent decision gutting Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. An unprecedented affront to one of the major achievements of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the elimination of Section 4 is nothing more than a strategic maneuver to destroy voter equality. On my way to Washington, D.C., I happened to be on the same flight as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. When we landed, she and I had an impromptu conversation on this very issue, and I updated her on the August 24th march that National Action Network (NAN) and Martin Luther King III have planned to commemorate the 50thanniversary of the 'March on Washington' where his father delivered his historic 'I Have a Dream' speech. Today, as we continue to deal with the fight against 'Stand Your Ground' laws that set the climate for the George Zimmerman verdict, as well as the attack on voting rights, it's becoming apparent that the politics of distraction are in full effect. The chatter is being drummed up by people like Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, and cosigned by others like Don Lemon of CNN. Nice try, but we see you.
It's simply amazing how many on the right who never cared about 'Black issues,' or the fact that our youth are facing unequal access to education, jobs, housing and higher rates of incarceration, now suddenly want to act as if they are so concerned about what's going on with us. Shortly after participating in the President's inauguration activities this year, a 15-year-old honor student by the name of Hadiya Pendleton was viciously killed by a stray bullet just blocks from her school in Chicago. The first national show that her mother appeared on was my broadcast, 'Politics Nation' on MSNBC. President Obama invited the young girl's family to his State of the Union address, and the first lady even attended her funeral. Where was O'Reilly then? The issue of rampant gun violence in the community is one that I have been dealing with for years at NAN, as well as on my TV and radio programs. What has O'Reilly done to raise awareness? NAN has a chapter in Chicago that works directly on the ground with those suffering from the ramifications of violence and more on a daily basis; they console, comfort and fight for grieving families to bring an end to the destruction. I haven't seen O'Reilly at any of those meetings. And let's not pretend that the problem of excessive gun violence is cities like Chicago isn't the direct result of inadequate gun laws in the state of Illinois that make it extremely easy for people to purchase deadly weapons outside of the windy city and bring them back into their neighborhoods. If O'Reilly is so concerned about Chicago's violence, then maybe he and his cohorts should do something about gun laws in that state and around the country.
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