Greene County Democrat

Tag: Roe v. Wade

  • Newswire : Kamala Harris draws historic 75,000 at D.C. rally, pledges’ We Won’t Go Back’

    VP Kamala Harris on stage at rally

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

     

    With just one week to Election Day and over 51 million ballots already cast, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris delivered a historic closing argument before an enthusiastic crowd estimated at over 75,000 at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. Initially planned as an intimate gathering of around 8,000, the rally quickly transformed into a record-breaking show of support, highlighting Harris’s momentum in the final days of her campaign as she aims to become the first woman, and first Black woman, to serve as President of the United States.

    At 7:37 p.m. EST, Harris took the stage to a thunderous, rockstar-like reception, complete with red and blue lights strobing and a standing ovation that roared on. “Good Evening America!” Harris greeted the crowd. “Thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives,” she said, as chants of “Kamala, Kamala” echoed through the crowd.

    “One week from today, you will have a chance to make a decision that directly affects your lives, the lives of your family, and the future of this country. It will probably be the most important vote you’ve ever cast,” she continued. “It’s more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates. It’s about a choice of whether you have a country of freedom, or one ruled by division.”

    Harris drew a sharp contrast between herself and her opponent, former President Donald Trump, who held his farewell rally at Madison Square Garden two days prior, a gathering that featured racially charged rhetoric. Standing at the same Ellipse where Trump, on January 6, 2021, encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol, Harris recalled that tragic day.

    “We know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election — an election that he knew he lost,” Harris said during her 30-minute speech. “Americans died as a result; 140 law enforcement officers were injured.” The crowd’s response was electric as Harris continued, “While Donald Trump sat in the White House watching as the violence unfolded, he was told the mob wanted to kill his own vice president, and he responded with two words: ‘so what.’ That’s who Donald Trump is. He wants you to give him another four years.”
    In an unflinching critique, Harris called Trump “unstable, obsessed with revenge, and out for unchecked power,” and warned that a Trump administration would mean more division, chaos, and retribution. “Donald Trump wants to avoid his problems. He intends to use the U.S. military against Americans who simply disagree with him,” Harris charged. “He’s not focused on making your life better. He’s consumed by grievance.”

    Harris emphasized her dedication to uniting the country, saying her focus was on “common ground and common-sense solutions.” She pledged to be president for all Americans, a theme underscored by banners reading “Freedom” and “USA” that adorned the event space. “I am not looking to score political points; I am looking to make progress,” she asserted. “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail.” Harris assured the crowd, “We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It’s time to turn the page on the drama, conflict, fear, and division.”

    The atmosphere, likened to a festival with loudspeakers blaring upbeat music and flags distributed to attendees, deeply moved Southeast D.C. resident Fatimah Glasnow, who arrived five hours early to secure her spot. “The feeling here is hope, love, and peace,” Glasnow said. “An America where we can all thrive, regardless of our race or gender. I needed this kind of energy in my life.” She expressed confidence in Harris’s promises, particularly on issues of social and maternal justice. “She’s advocated for social justice and, really, justice itself.”

    For Harris, the event carried personal significance, serving as a moment to explain what drives her as a leader. “There’s something about people being treated unfairly or overlooked that, frankly, just gets to me,” she shared. “I don’t like it. It’s what my mother instilled in me — a drive to hold accountable those who use their wealth or power to take advantage of others.”

    Addressing the fall of Roe v. Wade, Harris assured the crowd that she would fight to restore the reproductive rights she argued Trump and his Supreme Court appointees had taken away. “I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America,” she declared, reiterating her commitment to preserving and expanding civil rights.

    Capitol Hill resident Leander Davis, a social services worker, said Harris’s words resonated deeply. “She’s all of us,” Davis said. “She’s been criticized, ostracized, demonized, and called all sorts of names, yet she hasn’t stopped fighting for what’s right. When she’s president, we will all be better off.”

    Harris emphasized that her campaign was about more than just policy changes; it was about ensuring fairness and justice for every American. “If you give me the chance to fight on your behalf, there is nothing in the world that will stand in my way,” she promised, highlighting her experience as a prosecutor who fought against cartels, banks, and for-profit colleges.

    Harris’s electrifying rally at the Ellipse, with its powerful visuals of American flags and banners of unity, drew a clear contrast with Trump’s rhetoric. “If elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office,” Harris said, gesturing toward the White House, “with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.” She stressed that her administration would prioritize solutions to lower costs, support working families, and restore a sense of unity and purpose.

    Harris emphasized that, despite her time serving under President Joe Biden, her presidency would take a different course because of the unique difficulties that America is currently facing. “I have been honored to serve as Joe Biden’s vice president,” she said. “But I will bring my own experiences and ideas to the Oval Office. My presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different.”

    The vice president also tackled the political lightning rod of immigration. “Politicians have got to stop treating immigration as an issue to scare up votes in an election, – and instead treat it as the serious challenge that it is,” Harris said, “that we must finally come together to solve.”

    “I will work with Democrats and Republicans to sign into law the border security bill that Donald Trump killed,” she demanded.

    Harris said while she will focus on prosecuting cartels and transnational gangs, “we must acknowledge we are a nation of immigrants.”“And I will work with Congress to pass immigration reform, including an earned path to citizenship for hardworking immigrants, like farmworkers and our laborers.”

    At the close of her speech, Harris delivered a final rallying cry. “America, for too long, we have been consumed with division, chaos, and mutual distrust. But it doesn’t have to be this way,” she asserted. “It is time for a new generation of leadership in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next President of the United States.”

    She said she “grew up as a child of the civil rights movement, my parents would take me to marches in a stroller where crowds of people of all races, faiths and walks of life came together to fight for the ideals of freedom and opportunity. I’ve lived the promise of America.”

  • Newswire: Black women in the South have been bracing for Roe’s fall for decades

    Abortion protest march in Atlanta

    By Char Adams and Bracey Harris, NBCBLK

    Tight restrictions on abortion have already placed the procedure out of reach for many Black women in America — obstacles that will grow even more daunting if the landmark Roe v. Wade is overturned. 
    Across the Black Belt — the Southern states where the echoes of slavery reverberate in legislation that perpetuates political and social inequities — women have long confronted overwhelming costs and logistical obstacles in seeking reproductive health care.
    Earlier this week a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion signaled the end of abortion rights nationally, which would leave an already marginalized group, who seek abortion care at a higher rate, with less access to family planning services, resulting in poor health, education and economic outcomes, according to researchers, experts in family planning and advocates for reproductive justice.
    “Women are going to die,” said Dalton Johnson, who owns an abortion clinic in Huntsville, Alabama. “It might not be as many as it was in the ’70s because we have medication abortions. There are groups that are going to have access to those — whether legally or illegally. But everybody’s not going to be able to do that and women are going to die.”
    If Roe falls, many women in the South will turn to a network of grassroots organizations and advocacy groups led by Black women that has emerged out of necessity to fill gaps in health care coverage and the social safety net. These groups have already been helping women who struggle to compile the cash — and coordinate the time away from work, child care and transportation — that are necessary to get the procedure.
    Laurie Bertram Roberts, the executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund, an Alabama-based nonprofit that offers funding and support for women who have abortions, recalls a woman who received financial aid after having to choose between paying her electric bill and paying for her abortion.
    “One time, it was bailing somebody out of jail to get their abortion,” she said. Roberts and other reproductive rights advocates and leaders of small abortion funds across the South said that while they’re not ready for the challenge of Roe being overturned, they are as prepared as they can be.
    “We’ve been planning for this possibility for several years,” Roberts said. “This isn’t a new threat, but it’s a larger threat. So many states could lose abortion access at once. Like 2,300 to 3,000 people get abortions at the clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, a year. How do you reroute 3,000 people out of state?”
    Nearly two dozen states are likely to ban or severely restrict abortion access if Roe is overturned, and 13 have “trigger laws” to ban abortion immediately, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the Center for Reproductive Rights, which support abortion access. Advocates, organizers and experts all agree that Black women in the South will bear the brunt of these restrictions. 
    Black people make up about 38 percent of Mississippi’s population, according to recent Census data, but they accounted for 74 percent of abortions in the state in 2019, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Alabama’s figures are similar, with Black people accounting for about 27 percent of the state’s population but 62 percent of abortions. 
    Johnson pointed out that low-income patients and people of color already have to navigate a health care system that can be inattentive and discriminatory. But people with work obligations, financial struggles and lack of transportation also simply have a more difficult time getting to abortion providers in other states. This, organizers said, means they would be even less likely to get an abortion if Roe is overturned — worsening a cycle that perpetuates poverty for Black people. 
    Research shows that unintended pregnancies hold people back from completing their education and getting and keeping jobs and can lead to poor health and economic outcomes for their children. People denied abortions are more likely to live in poverty, with economic instability and poor physical health. “It’s people who have been pushed to the margins,” said Monica Simpson, the executive director of SisterSong, a Georgia-based reproductive justice organization that serves people of color. “It’s those living in states where access has been completely obliterated, they’re going to be impacted most — that’s people of color, low-income folks, queer, trans and gender-nonconforming folks.”
    Black organizers have argued that Roe has always been “insufficient” for Black people who lack resources. So, they have resolved that the work after Roe will look a lot like the work they’ve been doing to fight for reproductive justice for decades — but intensified. 

    ‘Every dollar counts so much’ 

    For two weeks in April, the New Orleans Abortion Fund, which primarily assists patients in Southern states, had to inform callers and clinics that it was out of money for the month.
    Although the fund is back up and running, A.J. Haynes, the board chair, expressed concerns last month that the nonprofit would be unable to raise enough money to help every caller in need. 
    Many of the callers the fund supports live in states where the choice to have an abortion is more fatiguing than workable. Mississippi and Louisiana have the nation’s highest poverty rates, and residents make deep sacrifices to scrape up enough for their appointments. 
    In 2021, most of the nonprofit’s callers were Black. More than half asking for help already had at least one child and received health insurance through Medicaid. Under the Hyde Amendment, people on Medicaid cannot access federal funding for abortion care.  
    “Every dollar counts so much here,” Haynes said. “Every dollar is gas in someone’s tank. Every dollar is literal food in someone’s mouth.”
    Across the Deep South, access to abortion care is already buckling, said Johnson, the Alabama clinic owner. The fallout from a Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy has spilled over into surrounding states as clinics like Johnson’s serve an influx of new patients. Women in Mississippi, where the only abortion clinic in the state provides treatment up to 16 weeks of pregnancy, might travel hundreds of miles to the Alabama Women’s Center if they need a procedure further into their second trimester.
    In 2020, abortion funds gave more than $10 million to support more than 400,000 people, according to the National Network of Abortion Funds, which includes Yellowhammer along with some 88 funds across the country — a majority of them in the South — and three international funds. 
    But the locally run funds — many launched by Black organizers — can face an uphill battle in securing resources, even as donations flood Planned Parenthood and other national groups. 
    “They will have to raise more money,” said Marcela Howell, president and CEO of the National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda. “This will intensify their work. They will need more money to actually achieve what they’re trying to do. They’ll have to build their existing systems up to higher levels.” 
    For more information and to donate, contact: YellowhammerFund.org or call 205/582-4950.