FIFTEEN

COOKING UP SOME GUMBO

MY EXPERIENCE WITH the Clinton campaign brought home again how racialized this issue was in the minds of many of the uninformed. That meant that anybody who didn’t care about African American men or, let’s put it a different way, who didn’t feel as much commitment toward addressing the explicit or implicit racial biases that African Americans have had to endure in this country, are not likely to be supportive of rights restoration. The statistics didn’t support felony disenfranchisement as a purely African American issue, but perception did, and we all know which one of those two is going to prove more important.

THAT RACIALIZATION OF OUR BALLOT INITIATIVE WAS THE NEXT HURDLE WE HAD TO FACE, and it was a large one. In a state like Florida, we would need more than just African Americans to support the issue.

How did it get this way? When people thought about felon disenfranchisement, they thought about crime. They thought about people coming out of prison. If you close your eyes and think of criminal justice, the image that you see is more often than not one of an African American person. For some people, that’s because they know about the disproportionate impact that felon disenfranchisement has on the African American community. They know the history of how felon disenfranchisement targeted the newly freed slaves. But for the majority of folks out there, when the image of a felon pops up in their minds, it is an African American man, because that’s what society has ingrained in us.

The math, however, doesn’t support this conclusion. The statistics fluctuate, but it tends to average that only one in four individuals who commit a felony is African American. What feeds the false narrative that African Americans are the overwhelming number of people who commit felonies it that it is African Americans who are far more likely to be imprisoned for their crime. In that sense, felon re-enfranchisement would very much help repair the fabric of the African American community, with so many Black men and women getting out of jail.

But those aren’t the only people who lose their rights—everyone who is convicted of a felony loses their right to vote, to serve on a jury, to own a firearm, and so forth. Public perception of felon disenfranchisement as an African American issue is formed, however, by the fact that 75 percent of people who are convicted of felony offenses in a given year are not sentenced to prison. Most of those offenders are white, with more money, better access to quality legal services, and the benefit of a perception that causes judges and juries alike to overlook troubling aspects of their cases.

How could we separate the painful fact that African Americans are disproportionate represented in the prison population and highlight how felony disenfranchisement actually impacts folks across not only racial demographics but across political demographics as well? It is not a partisan issue. It is not an African American issue. It is an all-American issue.

THE FACT THAT THIS WAS A HUMAN ISSUE, AND DID NOT BELONG PARTICULARLY TO ONE group or another, became the most important consideration for how we shaped our messaging going forward. We learned there was a science to this work and brought in the renowned psychologist Dr. Phyllis Watts. Bringing her into the fold elevated our discussions about how voters think and react. Dr. Watts was able to fairly quickly identify certain elements that could trigger racial anxieties in the psychology of a voter. At the time, it reminded me of a book I read, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. In that text, the author, Ian Haney López, identified multiple examples from our nation’s history of politicians making racially based appeals without ever identifying the groups they were demonizing. In those cases, politicians were trying to convince white voters that minorities were their true enemies.

We wanted to avoid using language that would trigger a primal response from voters. Instead, we wanted to use language to educate voters as to all of the positives that felon re-enfranchisement would generate. For example, if you restore civil rights to people, that can stimulate the economy and expand the tax-paying base. It can reduce crime, which not only increases public safety but also translates into savings for the state and the ability to relocate dollars to other areas of need.

A CITIZENS’ INITIATIVE TO CHANGE THE STATE CONSTITUTION IS REQUIRED TO DEAL with only one subject at a time. Even if it inadvertently dealt with something else, the initiative stood the chance of being ruled unconstitutional. This is contrary to what the Florida Constitution Revision Commission could do, which was to lump two or even three different issues together into one proposed amendment. Those issues might not be even related to each other; there could be an amendment that deals with the schools, the courts, and the environment all at the same time. A voter might only agree with one of the three issues, but they would have to vote for all three of them in order to get the one they want approved.

As we fine-tuned our single-pointed ballot initiative, we had a lot of considerations to juggle. There was everything we had found in our second set of polling to take into account; we wanted our language to mirror the responses of focus groups that had resulted in such enthusiastic numbers. A cohort of us drafted samples, running them by other organizations as well as attorneys and judges. I saw us getting closer and closer to actually landing on the final wording, where we had dotted all our i’s and crossed all our t’s—and shredded all those other what-ifs.

One of the challenges of proposing a constitutional amendment is that you only get a certain number of words to put on the ballot. You could have a longer text that is available to voters in a booklet provided by the Florida Division of Elections. But on the ballot itself, including the title, the description could only be seventy-five words long. You also can’t engage in electioneering, meaning you can’t tie your initiative to the candidacy of any individual running for local, state, or federal office.

There were some concerns about whether or not we would be in alignment with the single-subject rule. We considered trying to address that by having multiple initiatives. For instance, the Fair Districts Campaign, a measure to limit gerrymandered districts so that politicians are less able to protect their seats by rewarding their allies, had to present two amendments: Amendment 5 and Amendment 6. They both passed in 2010, but if only one had, the other would have been irretrievably weakened. We didn’t want to risk dividing people’s support that way, and also, two initiatives cost, if not twice the money, at least a lot more than one did.

We decided to just be as simple as possible and focus on restoring the ability to vote. It took us over a year, but eventually we came up with language for the Voting Restoration Amendment in October of 2014 that we felt comfortable with:

This amendment restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation. The amendment would not apply to those convicted of murder or sexual offenses, who would continue to be permanently barred from voting unless the Governor and Cabinet vote to restore their voting rights on a case by case basis.

We submitted the language to the Florida secretary of state and waited. The process after that would be as follows: If our language was approved, we would then put it on a petition. After we collected a certain number of petitions in a certain number of congressional districts, that would trigger a review by the Florida Supreme Court. That review would analyze the initiative to see if it met all of the legal requirements. If the opinion was favorable, we would be allowed to continue to collect petitions until we had the required number to get it onto the ballot and put it before voters.

So there would be many moments of truth, but this was our first one. The secretary of state came back with an approval. It was game on. On October 31, 2014, I printed the first batch of petitions to be collected. Now we would have to use our hearts and understanding to bring that language to the people.

PART OF THAT MISSION FELL TO ME. I HAVE A LONG HISTORY OF BEING ABLE TO CROSS the barriers erected by race. My earliest memory, in fact, on Saint Croix, was about my friendship with a white girl. Amy Waters and I had a relationship where we didn’t see color. She came from a family of evangelists who were going around the island, opening churches. Amy was the granddaughter of some of these missionaries. She was about my age at the time, maybe four or five years old. We were like a brother and sister. At that point, I didn’t know the difference between Black and white. That sometimes comes later in a child’s development, especially growing up in a place where Black people were the majority. I couldn’t see that Amy was the whitest of white and I was among the blackest of black.

The time came when her family had to leave the island for good. We went with them to the airport. Amy and I were hugging each other really tightly and wouldn’t let go of each other, because we knew she wasn’t going to come back. We didn’t want to lose each other. Our parents pulled us apart and took us on our way, but then we each broke loose from whoever had ahold of us, and ran back to each other, embracing and crying because we didn’t want to be separated. That was my first instance of having my heart broken. We were probably too young to understand what love was, but I think that what we displayed was actually love.

In later years, this story reminded me that racism is not inherent; it’s something that is taught to children. Amy and I didn’t see anything wrong with the color of our skin or see how that could get in the way of our caring for each other. Now, you may say that I was too young, too innocent to know any better. But my experiences with being able to see both sides continued.

When my mother and father separated, he went to live in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, while she stayed in Miami. Rather than be able to see them both during the week, or one of them on the weekends, the compromise they hit on was that I would alternate entire seasons living with each of them. My seventh- and eighth-grade years I spent in Illinois. Ninth grade I did in Miami. Tenth and eleventh grades I went back and forth between Illinois and Florida, and so forth.

That may sound hard enough for an adolescent to adjust to, but it got even more interesting. When I would go live with my dad, I would attend a predominantly white school. When I would live with my mom, it was a predominantly Black school. In Florida, there were maybe three white people at our school, and the rest were Latinx, African American, or Haitian. In Illinois, there were maybe ten to fifteen African Americans and maybe five Latinxs. I was going to school in very different worlds. And I was asked to function in both of those worlds.

Those experiences of being at an all-white school alternating with being at an all-Black school taught me a lot. So many times we think we’re living in completely different worlds. That might be the case when you’re talking about privilege or material things. But when you’re talking basic core human needs, you find all worlds are very similar. The same hierarchy you see in white schools, you see in Black schools. Who has the best clothes? Who’s the fashionable girl with all the designer stuff? Who has a little more than everybody else? Who’s the funny guy? Who’s the smart person? Who’s the nerd? People have the same fears everywhere; people have the same anxieties. The same issues that you would find among Black folks, you’d find among white folks: wanting to find love, wanting to feel like we are somebody.

By the time I graduated from high school, I could talk to anyone: Black, white, Latinx, Caribbean, and later in the army, Asian, European, you name it. All it took was being willing to really listen to someone else’s perspective and being open enough to understand that another person’s perspective mattered to them. And if it mattered to them, it should matter to you.

THROUGH MY WORK AT PICO, I HAD BECOME FAMILIAR WITH A NUMBER OF THE FAITH-BASED communities in Florida. These churches, synagogues, and mosques were in sync about the kind of social justice initiative we were striving to put forth on a statewide ballot, and they would end up playing a significant role in the initiative. By the time of the election, over eight hundred faith institutions supported our efforts through various means. Under the faith-specific banner of “Let My People Vote,” African American, Evangelical, and Latinx Evangelical churches; synagogues; and mosques were all of one accord in support of “Second Chances.” While the element of voting tends to speak to politics, what we were trying to accomplish ran much deeper than politics. This initiative was about more than that, it was about forgiveness, restoration, and love—concepts that could resonate with any major religious body as they are interwoven into the fabric of all these faiths. I felt comfortable speaking to any of those groups about what we were trying to accomplish. Because of my unique background, I was able to not only cross the color barrier but also those barriers sometimes put up between religions.

My dad, as I have said, was a preacher, and he was a serious preacher. Our family was in church a lot, Wednesday and Friday and all day Sunday for everything from services to Bible study. In my twenties, I was introduced to Islam by some very dignified and serious young men. One of the things that caught my attention when I read the Quran was that it held almost identical stories to what was in the Bible. Reading more deeply, I came to the understanding that the original book was the Torah of the Jews (the first five books of the Old Testament) and beyond that a lot of the events surrounding the major characters in all three of those books, the Old and New Testaments, and the Quran, all occurred in Egypt. The three faiths were connected as the “Abrahamic faith.” So, I started reading books like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which had symbolic links to these three major religious traditions.

All of this study helped me have a more inclusive approach to people and how they tried to solve their problems through religious practices. I came up with the analogy of a mother calling her four daughters into a kitchen and telling them, “Listen, I’m going to show you how to make my special gumbo. It’s a family secret, but I want to show this recipe to you as my offspring, so when you come of age you can pass this tradition on to your families.”

I could envision that mother proceeding step by step on how to make this family gumbo, and they get it. Generations down the line, those daughters have daughters, and their daughters have daughters. Now imagine at a family reunion the great-granddaughters coming together, and they’re going to make great-grandma’s famous gumbo. I could see those great-granddaughters in the kitchen arguing, telling each other that they’re not doing it the right way, their way. Throughout the generations there have been different variations applied by different families, based on that individual’s understanding and preference for what suited their needs. So, while one daughter would say, “No, the potatoes go in first,” another would say, “No, no, you have to bake the potatoes, first, then you put it in there.” And so forth.

Each of these great-granddaughters believe within the depths of their heart that they are the ones who have the original recipe, and the others are wrong. In a similar way, every Abrahamic religion came from the same source but took on a different personality through the generations. And now you have folks saying, “My way of thinking is the correct way, and your way is wrong. I’m the one who’s going to Heaven, and you’re going to Hell.”

I felt that every experience I had had in my life, starting with being a Preacher’s Kid, prepared me for this moment. It had set the framework for me to understand that there is more than one perspective and that I’m not always right. My view on things is not the only view and is not more legitimate than your view. We can talk it through, because we can’t let different approaches and perspectives obscure the fact that we are still, at the end of the day, all just making grandma’s gumbo with a twist.