Behind The Trigger

Did You Know?

I am registered as an independent voter because I could not support either the Democratic or the Republican Party. I must confess though that my inclination has been more towards the Democratic Party. Now the presidential campaign is locked in a dead heat between democratic candidate John Kerry and republican incumbent George W. Bush; and I cannot for the life of me decide to whom to give my vote. None of the candidate independent or party affiliated suits my taste or purpose.

Now to be honest I don’t like George W. Bush (he doesn’t care, he doesn’t know who I am, he doesn’t want to know who I am), but I decided to take a look at the Republican Party and have discovered some very interesting things. The image most people have of the Republican Party is that it is elitist and you don’t find too many minorities that are republican; the Democratic Party on the other hand has tons of minority support. But, for those who are interested, did you know that the Republican Party has done more for minorities than the Democratic Party has EVER done.

First of all, the Republican Party was started as a protest to the expansion of slavery that was a shocker for me (show how little I knew). Here is the slogan of the very first Republican candidate for president, John C. Frémont, "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont."

Abraham Lincoln, a republican, the first to be president wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Sure it was propaganda at the time since he had no power over the Confederacy, but the impact…slave everywhere stood and said “we’re free.” It was a republican congress that passed the 13^th amendment outlawing slavery (incidentally it was democrat who started the whole thing and also put into the constitution the Three-Fifth amendment, we don’t need to elaborate on that do we?). It was republicans who passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, recognizing Blacks as citizens. It was republicans who proposed the 14^th amendment, stating: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

And here is a big one for worker everywhere, It was republicans who passed the National Eight Hour Law, which, though it applied only to government workers, brought relief for overworked federal employees by limiting the work day to eight hours, which today is a standard across the board.

Here is another good one; in 1869 the first black to enter congress did so as a republican, which started a trend that was not broken until 1935…hhhmmmm, something to think about isn’t it.

It was also republicans who passed the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed voting rights regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude and two years later, the Republican Congress turned its sights toward women's issues and authorized equal pay for equal work performed by women employed by federal agencies.

Now believe me much to my dismay the list goes on and on and we’re not even out of the 1800’s yet, but I am going to stop here. The democratic party has been riding the coat tail of one president for over forty years now, a president who I might add expressed his embarrassment that people in his campaign were associated with Sammy Davis jr., who was about to marry a caucasian woman; it is time we told the democratic party to put up or shut up.

But I think we need to be smarter; part of why I registered as an independent is because I feel no matter which party I vote for, I still lose. Now look who the winners are, the wealthy and big business and why? They contribute money to both parties, so both parties are beholden to them and have to listen to their needs. If George Bush went into a minority neighborhood and was asked by them what have you done for us? He would probably say, “Nothing, you didn’t vote for me.” That is the dangerous position of minorities always voting with one party. We need to pool our monies and buy support from both parties and just as important, we need voting representation in both parties. Maybe then, we might see some positive changes that would benefit all people.

By Errol W. Angus