In 1980 in Phildelphia MS some 17 miles and 17 years removed

[harrison]

from the place where three civil rights workers were murdered for registering people to vote, Ronald Reagan stood at the Neshoba County fair and invoked the phrase, "state's rights." Of course, those were code words to all the disaffected white southerners to vote for the Republican candidate. Remember that in 1976 Miss. had voted for Jimmy Carter, its electoral votes actually putting him in the WH on election night.

In my opinion, the Republican Party actually sold its soul to the devil on the day that Reagan invoked the ghosts of the old segregationists. In the 1960's, Republicans had actually voted for the passage of the civil rights act.

Yesterday, in my humble opinion, was a largely symbolic act, but symbols are powerful because they sometimes transmit larger truths. And the truth was that yesterday, a black woman, a white woman and a black man stood up to the Republican Party, which is surely run by remnants of the old Dixiecrats, and other various and assorted groups and said, "You are no longer going to do business this way."

January 6, 2005 was Ronald Reagan, 1980, in reverse. It was the representatives of the disenfranchised voters who said, "the battle is on again."

What is needed is a Democrat party with leaders with guts who will call out the corruption of this Republican Party and say, "whatever you do, you will not disenfranchise people from that most fundamental right to vote."

Sadly, by his absence yesterday, John Kerry chose against speaking truth to power and has taken himself out as the kind of new Democratic leader who will have to have the heart and soul of the civil rights leaders of the 1960's.

That is what is needed now.