What’s
Next? Separate Drinking Fountains?
(January 26th, 2009)
In 1787 our nation crafted a political compromise at our Constitutional Convention that was not one of our nation’s finer moments. It was known as the Three Fifths Compromise. Reduced to its most basic, it said slaves counted as three fifths of a person for voting, not that they could vote in the first place of course. Steve Sisolak seems to think that the serfs of Laughlin should be happy with his own Two Fifths Compromise.
The terms of the Three Fifths Compromise decided that the southern states could count their slaves as three fifths of a person for the purposes of determining congressional representation and electoral votes for President. So slaves counted for votes, they just couldn’t use those votes. Steve Sisolak’s Two Fifths Compromise gave just two fifths of the Laughlin Town Advisory Board seats to appointees who weren’t radical left wing Democrats, one of whom didn’t win his seat anyway. So it left the majority of citizens who voted with a helpless minority on the Board and no voice in their own affairs.
Steve Sisolak has decided to create a segregated Laughlin. Radicals, who campaigned for him like John Geremia and Mike Bekoff or, in the case of Yoko Allen, simply bought their seat, will get preferential voting rights that let them control our town. Conservative Democrats, Republicans Non-Partisans and other moderates and conservatives get the second class token vote that means nothing.
Don’t let the Radicals try and offer us any other version of the Two Fifths Compromise. He may try to “split the difference” or “reach a reasonable accommodation”. He may try to approach individual citizens to take a seat on the Board to be a “moderating influence”. OUR ANSWER MUST BE NO. Anything less than the seating of the five winners of the straw poll is unacceptable. These seats are morally not Sisolak’s to offer.
I urge all citizens to attend the meeting Steve Sisolak will be at this Tuesday at 4:00 PM at Laughlin High School cafeteria. Bring your outrage and your dignity. Remember our three demands: no compromise, end the occupation and restore voting rights now.
