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PEOPLE'S ORGANIZATION FOR PROGRESS CALLS UPON SEN. TRENT LOTT TO STEP DOWN AS SENATE MAJORITY LEADER. ASKS U. S. SENATE TO CENSURE HIM. SAYS AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT LOTT & THURMOND IN THE SENATE.
(Statement by Lawrence Hamm, Chairman, People's Organization For Progress (POP), at a press conference held in Newark, New Jersey on December 17, 2002)
Trent Lott must go. The People's Organization For Progress and the other organizations represented here today believe that Senator Lott must stepdown as Majority Leader of the United States Senate.
He must resign because his public pronouncements and his voting record demonstrate that he cannot be a true leader for all the people of this country.
In 2002, of all the things he could have possibly said Senate Lott found it necessary to restate with the utmost seriousness his support for the racist and segregationist 1948 presidential campaign of Senator Strom Thurmond. That statement alone is proof enough that Lott is unfit to occupy one of the most powerful leadership positions of our government.
Senator Lott has done enough harm already. He should do his party and the nation a great favor and step aside so someone whose core values are closer to the concept of "liberty and justice for all" can fill the position of Majority Leader.
Furthermore, the People's Organization For Progress calls not only for Sen. Lott's removal from his party position but we also call for his censorship by the entire United States Senate.
Senator Lott said,"I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Who was Strom Thurmond? Strom Thurmond was the presidential candidate for the States Rights Party whose slogan was "Segregation Forever." This white supremacist group opposed civil rights and wanted to maintain the apartheid status quo of the Jim Crow South.
Thurmond himself said the United States government didn't have enough troops to force the South to end segregation. Thurmond and his Dixiecrats believed in white superiority and black inferiority. They believed that the Confederacy, that wanted to maintain slavery, was right and Lincoln was wrong.
They opposed civil rights. They wanted to maintain that southern way of life where members of the Klan were heroes and lynching was always an option. Thurmond and his party were the antithesis of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.
For Senator Lott to make such an endorsement of Thurmond and his racist movement demonstrates the grossest insensitivity to the African-American community and all people who fought and died to end legal segregation in America.
Leadership positions aside, the American people would probably be better off without Lott and Thurmond in the U. S. Senate.
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The People's Organization For Progress (POP) is a grassroots organization, based in the Newark area, working for racial, social, and economic justice.
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"If there is No Struggle, There is No Progress," Frederick Douglass