Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Mike Pence Said Martin Luther King Jr. Was His Hero Growing Up. Here’s Why That Sounds Absurd.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/16/3799095/mike-pence-and-mlk/
"The fact that Pence is referencing King as an inspiration may seem ludicrous when you look at Pence’s record. King stood with President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. Yet, when it comes to voting rights, an issue that King fought hard for, you see that Indiana doesn’t make it easy for voters to get to the polls. The state only kept polling places open until 6 p.m. during the May primary, although most states keep their polls open to 8 p.m. or even later. Indiana doesn’t have any laws that require employers to allow workers to leave work to go vote. In contrast, King said in his 1957 speech called “Give Us The Ballot,” “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind. It is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact. I can only submit to the edict of others.” King was also an important leader for labor rights. The day before he was assassinated, he gave a speech to support sanitation workers who were on strike in Memphis. Those sanitation workers were trying to get union recognition. King spoke often about growing economic inequality and said social reforms should not be attacked as being “communist,” according to a collection of speeches that were recently discovered by historians. Pence, however, hasn’t been a friend to workers during his time as governor of Indiana. Although Indiana did not become a right-to-work state under his leadership, he fought to keep the law in place when two judges ruled that it violated the state’s constitution. Pence has also opposed raising the minimum wage and signed a law repealing the state’s common construction wage, which would allow workers for publicly-funded projects to earn a higher wage. Pence also supported cutting food stamps for tens of thousands of people"