Day 65: Cannon Free After Voting Rights Debacle

In a continued battle for access to America’s promise of freedom, Representative Park Cannon (D-GA) was arrested in her state’s Capitol. She later said she was “fighting voter suppression,” when she was handcuffed after knocking on Governor Brian Kemp’s door.

Kemp was signing into a law a widely — even beyond state borders — contested bill that allows the governor to appoint the chair of the State Election Board, places restrictions on absentee ballots and operating locations and hours for polling places, and enhances ID requirements. It also attempts to curb the long lines in recent elections and limits people, other than poll workers, from handing out food and water to folks waiting — sometimes hours — to vote.

Many, including President Biden, are concerned that SB 202, the “Election Integrity Act of 2021” will disenfranchise Black voters, especially.

“More Americans voted in the 2020 elections than any election in our nation’s history,” Biden said via statement today. “In Georgia we saw this most historic demonstration of the power of the vote twice — in November and then again in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate seats in January. Recount after recount and court case after court case upheld the integrity and outcome of a clearly free, fair, and secure democratic process.”

Still, he said, “This law, like so many others being pursued by Republicans in statehouses across the country is a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience…This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century. It must end.”

Cannon was requesting to witness the signing of the bill, a moment that was photographed and criticized for having only white males present. The officers on duty blocked her from entering the main door to Kemp’s office and arrested her when she went on to knock on the governor staff-only door.

She was taken to jail, charged with two felonies, and held until 11 p.m. yesterday. The recently elected Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) — her pastor — and a handful of activists immediately protested for her release, outside of the jail.

Warnock is the state’s first Black senator, elected earlier this year alongside Georgia’s first Jewish senator, John Ossoff, and first openly gay senator, Kim Jackson.

“I once again urge Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to make it easier for all eligible Americans access the ballot box and prevent attacks on the sacred right to vote,” Biden said.

“If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote.”