New vote coalition to host conference on ex-felons issues
Feb. 17, 2004
The Alabama Restore the Vote Coalition will have its official debut when it holds its first statewide conference on issues affecting ex-felons, especially their voting and civil rights, the weekend of Feb. 20-21, 2004, in Montgomery, Al.
Some of the top felony voting rights advocates and professionals in the nation will be attending the conference.
The list includes: Marc Mauer, the assistant director of The Sentencing Project in Washington, D. C., and the co-author of a landmark national study published in 1998, called “Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States”; Attorney Ryan Haygood with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York, and the lead counsel in a major ex-felons voting rights case in New York, Hayden v. Pataki; Courtney Strickland, Voting Rights Project Director with the Florida American Civil Liberties Union; Robert Crane, president of the JEHT Foundation in New York; and Rev. Eugene Williams, III, the executive director of LAM (a network of 50 churches in metropolitan Los Angeles).
Williams is recognized as one of the most gifted preachers and community organizers in the nation in unleashing the potential of ex-felons and their families. He will be the keynote speaker for the conference luncheon on Saturday, at 12:30 p.m., in the Joe L. Reed Acadome.
The purpose of the conference is two-fold: to educate the public on how they can assist ex-felons in getting their voting rights restored, once ex-felons have completed their sentence; and 2) to discuss how the coalition should go about organizing and working to change public attitudes and policies affecting the basic civil rights of ex-felons who have completed their sentence. In addition, the coalition wants to use the conference as a means to educate and persuade unlikely allies to support civic fairness and voter participation for those who have been impacted by the criminal justice system, as well as make people more aware of how bad our state is, in terms of the number of people who have been disenfranchised due to felony convictions.
The conference kicks off on Friday, Feb. 20, with a welcome reception and cultural cavalcade from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel. On Saturday, Feb. 21, all conference events and sessions will be held on the campus of Alabama State University in the Joe L. Reed Acadome, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. All sessions and events are open to the public.
The Alabama Restore the Vote Coalition was formed last spring as a vehicle to help Rep. Yvonne Kennedy get her felony voting rights bill passed by the Alabama Legislature. Today, approximately 30 organizations comprise the Coalition, including the Alabama Voter Education and Registration Alliance (AVERA), the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, Aid to Inmate Mothers (AIM), the NAACP State Conference, Alabama Arise, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama.
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