Tipsheet

Victim Fest Alert

The White House just produced a video featuring Tina Tchen of the White House Council on Women And Girls in "celebration" of the 90th anniversary of a woman's right to vote for their Open for Questions series. The video is more of an account of why women and minorities are victims and what President Obama thinks rather than a celebration and discussion of the history of Susan B. Anthony and women's suffrage. Shirleen Mitchell, the woman asking the questions, is from Blogher and says she is representing women and the blogger community.


At 7 minutes Mitchell asked the following:

“I do have another question around voting and it has to do with incarcerated women who happen to be incarcerated and do not have the ability to vote as well, especially women in communities of color where they may be the single source of resources for family and children. There are some challenges with their ability to vote once they are incarcerated and sometimes they are incarcerated for things that can be challenging at best to mention in terms of being in situations of you know maybe stealing pampers and being in jail for five years or something like that and separated for years from their children but really were just trying to survive and take care of their children at that particular moment. What do you think about some of the challenges there that their rights to vote are taken away and they are not able to participate.”

 

What? If someone steals a pack of pampers they will not go to jail for 5 years if at all unless they have previous offenses. Stealing a pack of pampers is not a felony. 


See the entire video here.