Finding relief from discrimination in government:
introduction
For the first time in our history, the racial balance of our local board of aldermen has shifted and the citizens of Eupora elected our first black mayor. Although we are living in troubling times, our past appears to be the burden we have yet to bear.
Consider the fact that criminal justice reform and voting rights of minorities sent to prison are now national conversation. Now consider the fact that since the last election, much of the local electorate is either sick, dead or in some form of penal punishment forbidding voting rights.
Those disparities are to be addressed by the government to prevent discrimination or even the appearance of bias. Federal laws like the Social Security Act and the federally funded SNAP program were written to end these disparities and gave the states and local governments the financial power to do so. However, when the state and local governments refuse to acknowledge these disparities and continue to disperse funding in the status quo the result is discrimination.
We are watching the federal government now begin to publicize the effects of the coronavirus on black and Hispanic communities. Ironically, before this pandemic, even the state’s local media began publicizing the racial disparities in our penal system that resulted in inhumane living conditions and death.
Now because of this new virus we are discussing new ways to enrich the pharmaceutical companies for a cure (companies who are simultaneously being sued for mass production of bad drugs) rather than the people dying in the penal system. Now consider this, of the local people you know that have been trapped by the criminal justice system, how many own farms that grow enough drugs to impact our city or can produce mass amounts of drugs to bring into our city?
In the coming weeks I hope to provide you great detail in how these disparities were intentionally created through malfeasance and money laundering of federal funds. I will publish a weekly article outlining a specific government program designed to eliminate disparities in food insecurity, housing and finance.
These programs include but are not limited to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Section 8 Voucher Program and the Supplemental Security Income Program. I have reported massive fraud in these agencies that have actually prevented ending these disparities. I pray our community realizes that the amount of funding spent on these programs should have shown signs of improvements.
My goal is to show exactly how the growth ended up with those same individuals who created the problem of disparate impact on minorities and not the intended relief as the federal law was written to provide. For the sake of the liability concerns by The Webster Progress-Times I will not include names, however these cases have also been filed in federal court for the public to view at any time. We need to know why these federal government services are not helping us as they should. I believe I have found the answers and they are not pretty but a solution has been provided and the responsibility lies with the community to demand relief.
The next article will address mass incarceration and our local vote.
Zorri N. Rush
Eupora
