There is a picture here. We know that there is the burning of a church. This is the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, that has written on the outside of the sacred place. I began my message or my statement on the floor with a word from Psalms. And here is written, ‘‘Vote Trump.’’
Now, we know that there are people that may want to provoke or not provoke, but what I think is important is that one candidate got more of the popular vote. We need to review the electoral college. Out of this election has come great concerns from the words that have been offered during the campaign that cannot be pulled back. The words that cannot be pulled back now have generated not only actions by individuals not in the government, children being maligned and attacked, individuals being attacked on the street, people feel frightened. Churches are being burned, which we passed a law some years back that it is a Federal crime to burn a church. Then to have an individual who has been associated with the kind of propaganda that, in essence, is discriminatory against so many of us as women, African Americans, Hispanics, and certainly people who have differences. Certainly we have seen potential of the KKK marching in North Carolina, been denounced by the Republican and Democratic State party chair in North Carolina; and we thank them for that.
So what does that mean for all of us? We have work to do. We have work to do. As Justice Learned Hand observed, if we are to keep our democracy, there must be one command: Thou shalt not ration justice. We have criminal justice reform to deal with. We have to address the individuals that have been incarcerated unfairly. We must give them a second chance. This is not myself speaking, this is religious groups speaking. This is Republicans and Democrats speaking about the importance of criminal justice reform. We have not heard any discussion on that, but we do know that there has been over 200 hateful acts in the election aftermath. That is a problem.
