1951 EHS grad shares memories Likely the Eupora High graduating class of 2020 will long remember their very different senior year end because of the coronavirus. I wonder how many of our Class of ’51 are left other than Dean Hall, Charlie Ward and Jimmy Rae Pittman, and who might share their memories with the WPT. Following is one of mine: Some who got to skip final exams were celebrating the afternoon off with a joyride in a classmate’s car, with her boyfriend driving. My friend Mary Johnston and I were chatting in the backseat when I noticed trees and ditches flying by much faster. Then I heard Pattie saying quietly to Joe, “Well, OK, you can get it up to 100, but then you have to slow down.” Whoa! I mean, really, whoa! My mind blanks now — and all I remember as we flashed past Walthall with Bellefontaine approaching uncommonly soon — was that we did slow down to be deposited eventually back at school in time to go home the usual way — me by the big ol’ yellow school bus that would seem awfully slow that afternoon. Perhaps this tidbit will jostle readers’ memories and prompt them to share. Every week when I draw the WPT from my mailbox, nothing else gets done until I’ve read it through and through. Thanks! Dartha Crutchfield Whitis Suwanee, Ga. Causes of disparate impact Part 1: federal spending in Congress Despite our criminal laws being designed to protect the citizens, our children, minorities and low-income individuals end up overpopulating the penal system and the source to most of the crimes is never apprehended. Consider the source. Do you personally know anyone who can manufacture or create the drug that politicians write laws to prohibit and your local law enforcement use to deprive you of a full electorate? Federal dollars are sent to the states to help relieve these foreseeable impacts and programs like SNAP, which evolved from food stamps, are not meant to be a permanent fix but a lifeline for those in need of help and an access to government services for folks in times of pandemic. However, a person most in need after incarceration is not allowed to participate due to state and local governments’ denial of those services. Subsequently, reoffenders supposedly violate state and local laws that create an offense of commerce activity dominating the healthcare industry that was learned locally after a failure to use federal funds to protect a convicted person’s rights under the U.S. Constitution. Unlike SNAP, programs like the Social Security Act were passed to help end income inequality before a time when minorities demanded these rights and the nation searched for ways to end reliance on slavery by increasing minimum wages and strengthening protections for the most vulnerable. Therefore, government needed to pass the Civil Rights Act, to ensure equality for minorities in opportunity for employment and later the Americans with Disabilities Act to protect people with disabling impairments from discrimination. As proof that these appropriated funds were not providing enough relief, in recent years Congress needed to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to ensure protections for the large number of Americans dying from the drugs being sold in our local department stores and pharmacies. Once again, our local law enforcement has used the federal dollars to relieve the impact and somehow crowded the prisons with our citizens now as so-called “repeat offenders.” Now an entire class of people were trained by our government, not to be a part of the solution, but to become a permanent outsider of the American way of life. Our federal government has not noticed an entire group of natural-born Americans who have been systematically deprived of the most basic form of protection. The vote. Some people you know have never had the right to vote nor access to a legally attainable form of income that would permit recovery from time in the penal system whether you are guilty or a victim of the discriminatory practices causing mass incarceration. Consider the only way to get approved for federal funding appropriations is to have a majority vote of the 100 U.S. senators in Congress. These 100 seats have been dominated by white men my entire life. Now consider, for at least two years now, all 100 senators, no matter what race or gender, have served with two people who represent Mississippi that were appointed. These two people in charge of the federal dollars were appointed by governors of Mississippi and used name recognition to win votes in the next election. The two people who make the decision about how federal dollars are spent across the world have never once attempted to create opportunities for the citizens affected by mass incarceration and advocate for the descendants of the Civil War rights to honor men who fought and died to keep slaves as a God-given right and were willing to destroy the U.S Treasury to do it. Our children do not seem to notice that nearly an entire generation of minorities cannot vote. New voters are unlikely to notice these facts that are not national conversation but still facts that deprive natural-born citizens of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and has a disparate impact on everyone. Now the government is tracking us and not the funding. We get called criminals, drug addicts and abusers of the system in the national spotlight, where on the local level we can see where the federal dollars end up and know the money never gets to us in a way that is effective because it continues to go through the hands of those who created the disparate impact.. The next article is “Causes of disparate impact Part 2: State-Level Spending” Zorri N. Rush Founder/CEO of The Trotter Foundation Eupora
