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Desmond Meade

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Desmond Meade
NationalityAmerican
EducationFlorida International University College of Law, Miami Dade College
Occupation(s)Executive Director, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition
Known forVoting Rights
SpouseSheena Meade
ChildrenXandre, Xavier, Xzion, Xcellence, Nathan
AwardsMacArthur Prize 2021
Time 100 2019 - 100 Most Influential People in the World
Doctor of Humane Letters, Bard College
Orlando Sentinel Central Floridian of the Year 2018
WebsiteFlorida Rights Restoration Coalition

Desmond Meade (born July 22, 1967) is a voting rights activist and Executive Director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.[1] As chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy, Meade led the successful effort to pass Florida Amendment 4, a 2018 state initiative that restored voting rights to over 1.4 million Floridians with previous felony convictions.[2] In April 2019, Time magazine named Meade as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[3] Meade's autobiography Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens was published in 2020; in 2021 he was awarded a MacArthur "Genius Grant."[4]

Early life and education

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According to The New York Times, Meade "was born in St. Croix and moved to Miami with his parents when he was 5. His mother worked as a waitress, and his father was a mechanic."[5] He graduated from high school in 1985, then joined the Army as a helicopter mechanic.[5] While in the Army, he began using cocaine, a habit that escalated over the years. In 1990, he faced an Army court martial for stealing from the base; after a three year sentence, he was given a dishonorable discharge.[5]

In civilian life, Meade's drug problem continued. He served time in jail for felony drug possession, and after a fight with his brother was convicted of aggravated battery, also a felony.

In 2001, he was convicted of possession of a firearm as a felon and sentenced to 15 years in prison.[5] (According to Meade, the gun was in the cupboard of the house where he was staying, and belonged to the owner of the house, not to him, but police gave evidence that they found Meade holding the gun in his hand.[6]) In 2004, however, an appeals court reversed his conviction and he was released.[5]

In 2005, after having considered suicide, Meade checked himself into a drug treatment program and began to rebuild his life.[5] He enrolled in Miami-Dade College while living in a homeless shelter, graduating in 2010 with the school's highest honors.[7]

Meade then enrolled in Florida International University College of Law, the only public law school in south Florida, graduating in 2013.[5] Meade, who had done volunteer work for rights restoration during his years at Miami Dade, joined the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition while he was in law school.[7]

Activism

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Campaign for Voting Restoration Amendment

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Florida as of 2018 was one of only three US states to deny voting rights to anyone with a felony record.[8] Because felon disenfranchisement is part of Florida's Constitution, which requires a 60% vote to modify, many efforts to restore voting rights to former convicts had been unsuccessful.[5][8]

In 2009, Meade became the head of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), a group aimed at restoring civil rights to felons in Florida who had completed their sentences and probation.[9] Meade described his goal as politically non-partisan, and worked closely with Republicans including former GOP lobbyist Neil Volz, who had spent time in prison in connection with Jack Abramoff.[10][11]

Starting in 2015, Meade led Floridians for Fair Democracy in a drive to qualify the "Voting Restoration Amendment" as a ballot initiative for the 2018 Florida elections, collecting 799,000 signatures. The initiative was approved in January 2018 for the November ballot.[12][9] Ultimately, the amendment passed, as Florida Amendment 4, with 64.55% of the vote. On January 8, 2019, an estimated 1.4 million ex-felons became eligible to vote.[13]

Restrictions on Amendment 4

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Republican lawmakers in Florida responded to Amendment 4 by passing a new law (SB 7066), disqualifying from voting any felons who had unpaid fines or legal judgments against them. As a result, more than half of the 1.4 million felon voters were again disqualified.[14] On appeal, the new law was overturned in May, 2020, by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, who ruled that the 24th Amendment prohibits Florida from conditioning voting on payment of fines and fees.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appealed Hinkle's injunction to the 11th Circuit Court, which, in September, 2020, overturned the injunction by a 6-4 margin, with the majority holding that "requirement that felons pay all financial obligations before voting does not violate their due process rights or impose a poll tax."[14]

According to the MacArthur Foundation, the FRRC (of which Meade is executive director) "is helping people find the information they need to meet the requirements [of SB 7066] .. and providing financial assistance to meet outstanding financial obligations. Meade and FRRC are also working on a series of criminal justice reform initiatives, including bail reform and re-entry programs, and finding ways to open access to housing and employment opportunities for returning citizens. "[4] The FRRC raised $28M for people with past felony convictions in Florida who needed to pay fines and fees before they could vote; the obligations of over 44,000 returning citizens were paid before the November 2020 election.[15]

Appeal for full civil rights restoration and pardon

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Although Meade graduated from law school in 2013, Florida law prevents him (or anyone with a past felony conviction) from being admitted to the Florida Bar.[16] Amendment 4 restored voting rights, but not other civil rights, such as the right to run for office or to sit for Florida's bar examination (required for practicing law in Florida.)[17]

Meade sought to regain his civil rights, appealing to Florida's clemency board and also asking for a pardon. The clemency process in Florida was made more restrictive by former Florida Governor Rick Scott, according to CBS News, so that the board "has discretion to deny clemency for any reason, mandates that applicants wait at least five years before starting the process, and are given just five minutes to speak in a hearing."[18]

At a clemency board hearing on September 23, 2020, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis denied Meade the pardon he would need to regain these civil rights.[19] He also stated that Meade was not eligible to have his civil rights restored because he had applied for a pardon.[20]

Florida Secretary of Agriculture Nikki Fried, the only Democrat on the clemency board, and the only board member who voted to restore Meade's civil rights, said that, during the two years of DeSantis's governorship, the board had approved only 30 requests from thousands of applications and called the Florida clemency system "broken."[18] DeSantis, who as governor has veto power over pardons or restorations of civil rights, cited Meade's 1990 dishonorable discharge from the Army as a reason to withhold clemency, saying that Meade could reapply if he cleared up questions about it.[20]

Meade reapplied and was again rejected by DeSantis in March, 2021, who again cited his 1990 military court martial, saying "As a former military officer, a dishonorable discharge is the highest punishment that a court martial may render. I consider it very serious."[21]

Autobiography

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Meade's autobiography Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens was published in 2020 by Beacon Press. NPR called it "a compelling story."[6] Publishers Weekly said that Meade "does a skillful job taking readers through the blow-by-blow of the campaign, including the process of writing the actual text of the referendum, and makes a persuasive case that restoring the civil rights of ex-felons will lower rates of recidivism."[22]

Personal life

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In December 2012, Meade married his wife Sheena, a labor activist and the mother of five children, whom he has adopted.[7][23] They live in Orlando, Florida.[24]

Recognition

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  • Time 100 Most Influential People in 2019[3]
  • Fast Company 100 Most Creative People 2019[25]
  • Orlando Sentinel 2019 Central Floridian of the Year[26]
  • University of Florida's Bob Graham Center for Public Service's 2019 Floridian of the Year[27]
  • Miami Dade College Alumni Hall of Fame[28]
  • 2021 MacArthur Fellowship[29]
  • Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College[30]

In June 2020, Meade was featured in a RepresentUs video focused on highlighting problems with America's criminal justice system.[31]

References

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  1. ^ "About Us". FRRC. Florida Rights Restoration Council. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  2. ^ "Florida Amendment 4, Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative (2018)". Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia.org. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  3. ^ a b "100 Most Influential People 2019". Time.com. Time Inc. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  4. ^ a b "Desmond Meade: Civil Rights Activist". MacArthur Foundation website. 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2021. Meade's campaign received a groundswell of support from diverse stakeholders across racial, socioeconomic, religious, and political divides...It re-enfranchised as many as 1.5 million Florida residents and resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in the country in the last fifty years.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Bazelon, Emily (September 26, 2018). "Will Florida's Ex-Felons Finally Regain the Right to Vote?". NY Times. Retrieved September 12, 2020. To its supporters, Amendment 4 represents a potential civil rights triumph: It could enfranchise more people at once than any single initiative since women's suffrage... More than one in five black voters can't vote in Florida, compared with about one in 10 voters in the state's general population (and one in 40 nationwide).
  6. ^ a b Toll, Martha Anne (October 7, 2020). "'Let My People Vote' Tells Of One Man's Journey To Getting 1.4 Million Back A Voice". NPR. Retrieved September 28, 2021. Desmond Meade's Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens is a compelling story about one man's rise from addiction, homelessness, and prison to run a successful campaign to re-enfranchise more than one million Florida voters.
  7. ^ a b c Harmata, Claudia (January 24, 2019). "From Homeless Addict to Law School Grad & Dad-of-5 — and How He Carried a Wave of Change Across Florida". People Magazine. Retrieved September 29, 2021. Over four months, he was able to get clean and then found refuge in a homeless shelter. But his transformation didn't stop there. 'It created an eternal obligation that I had to be an asset to my community and to give back,' he says of his turnaround.
  8. ^ a b Robles, Frances (November 7, 2018). "1.4 Million Floridians With Felonies Win Long-Denied Right to Vote". NY Times. Retrieved September 12, 2020. Florida was one of just three remaining states — the others being Iowa and Kentucky — that prevented people with felony records from voting.
  9. ^ a b Steven Lemongello (January 23, 2018). "Floridians will vote this fall on restoring voting rights to former felons". Sun Sentinel. Retrieved September 28, 2021. Floridians for Fair Democracy, led by Desmond Meade of Orlando, successfully gathered more than 799,000 certified signatures in their years-long petition drive, just a week before the deadline to reach the required total of about 766,000.
  10. ^ "Inside the Unlikely Movement That Could Restore Voting Rights to 1.4 Million Floridians". Mother Jones. October 6, 2016. Retrieved September 28, 2021. In 2009, Meade became head of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), and he was soon putting 50,000 miles a year on his car to help gather the nearly 800,000 signatures needed to place the Voting Restoration Amendment on the 2018 ballot.
  11. ^ Kolitch, Sam (November 20, 2020). "Let My People Vote – BPR Interviews: Desmond Meade". Brown Political Review. Retrieved September 28, 2021. When we did our campaign for Amendment 4, we were fighting just as hard for that person that wanted to vote for Donald Trump as that person that wished they could vote for Barack Obama.
  12. ^ "Florida has been stealing civil rights from Black people since the Civil War". The Intercept. September 6, 2018. Retrieved September 20, 2021. Activists started collecting petition signatures in 2015, under the banner of Floridians for Fair Democracy. Led by Desmond Meade, who was convicted of several drug charges and later completed a 15-year prison sentence for possession of a firearm as a felon, organizers collected more than 799,000 certified signatures from registered voters in all 27 congressional districts, surpassing the minimum 766,000 signatures needed to get on the November 6 ballot.
  13. ^ "Florida ex-felons can begin registering to vote as Amendment 4 takes effect". CBS News. January 8, 2019. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
  14. ^ a b Pickett, Alex. "Full 11th Circuit Rules Against Florida Felons in Voting Rights Case". Courthouse News. Retrieved September 20, 2021. Days later, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis lodged an appeal to the 11th Circuit, which halted the voting registration of thousands of felons in the run-up to the August primary and November general election.
  15. ^ Calvan, Bobby Caina (May 5, 2021). "Florida inquiry clears Bloomberg over felons voting case". associated press. Retrieved October 14, 2021. Since 2019, the group has raised some $28 million toward the effort and paid off the fines and fees of 44,000 released felons. Volz said Bloomberg did not give the coalition any money nor did he have any direct involvement in it.
  16. ^ Daley, David (May 3, 2020). "How Desmond Meade built a movement that restored voting rights in Florida — almost". Salon. Retrieved September 12, 2020. As president and founder of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, launched in the early 2010s after nearly a decade of organizing work by the Florida ACLU, the Brennan Center and the Sentencing Project around restoring voting rights to former felons they prefer to call "returning citizens," Meade led one of the most impressive grassroots petition drives in state history.
  17. ^ Ceballos, Ana (September 23, 2020). "Florida denies full pardon to Amendment 4 advocate Desmond Meade". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved September 29, 2021. The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office initially objected to Meade's pardon but later withdrew the objection. The office, which prosecuted some of Meade's cases, said its files were so old that they have long since been destroyed and no victims could be located...In Meade's case, Democrat Nikki Fried, the commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, was the only member who supported his request for a full pardon.
  18. ^ a b Farmer, Britt McCandless (September 27, 2020). "Florida denies Amendment 4 advocate Desmond Meade full pardon". CBS News. Retrieved September 29, 2021. Although the board deferred both Meade's request for pardon and his restoration of civil rights, they told him he could ask again....The board on Wednesday did restore civil rights to Neil Volz, who works with Meade as the deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. Volz had been convicted of conspiring to bribe members of Congress as part of the 2006 Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
  19. ^ Rohrer, Gray (September 23, 2021). "DeSantis, Cabinet won't pardon voting rights activist Desmond Meade, at least for now". Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved February 28, 2021. DeSantis said he had questions over Meade's dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Army for stealing government property in 1990. Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, a Republican who also sits on the board as a Florida Cabinet member, said he wanted to know if Meade's ex-wife had forgiven him after a domestic violence incident before he could grant a full pardon.
  20. ^ a b Kam, Dara (September 23, 2021). "Gov. DeSantis denies pardon for Desmond Meade, who championed Florida's fight for ex-felon voting". News Service of Florida. Retrieved February 28, 2021. Meade and his wife asked DeSantis if the Orlando resident could have his civil rights restored, which would allow him to serve on juries and run for public office, but DeSantis said that wasn't possible because Meade had applied for a pardon.
  21. ^ Swann, Sara (March 11, 2021). "Governor denies pardon for Florida felon voting rights advocate". The Fulcrum. Retrieved September 29, 2021. This is the second time DeSantis has denied Meade a pardon. His request was first rejected last September. DeSantis said he denied Meade a pardon due to his dishonorable discharge from the military three decades ago.
  22. ^ "Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens". Publishers Weekly. August 6, 2020. Retrieved September 28, 2021.
  23. ^ "Sheena Meade". Netroots Nation. 2019. Retrieved September 29, 2021. Born into a family of labor organizers, she soon found herself working for SEIU in South Carolina where she quickly became the State Director of a campaign tasked with organizing people around the Affordable Care Act
  24. ^ "Who are the 2021 MacArthur fellows?". AP. September 29, 2021. Retrieved September 29, 2021. Desmond Meade, 54, Orlando, Florida, civil rights activist working to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated citizens and remove barriers to their full participation in civic life.
  25. ^ McCorvey, J.J. (May 22, 2019). "How 'returning citizen' Desmond Meade helped restore voting rights to Florida's ex-felons". Fast Company. Retrieved September 29, 2021. For championing Florida's Amendment 4, voting rights activist Desmond Meade is one of Fast Company's Most Creative People of 2019.
  26. ^ "Desmond Meade selected as Orlando Sentinel's Central Floridian of the Year". Orlando Sentinel. March 28, 2019. Retrieved September 29, 2021.
  27. ^ "Desmond Meade, 2019 Citizen of the Year, Receives Recognition at Annual Graham Gala". Bob Graham Center for Public Service. 2019. Retrieved September 29, 2021. Meade is a former felon who struggled with homelessness before earning a law degree from the Florida International University College of Law. Currently, he is the Chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy and President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.
  28. ^ "2019 Alumni Hall of Fame Inductees". Miami Dade College Foundation. 2019. Retrieved September 29, 2021. Meade has orchestrated the reorganization and incorporation of a coalition comprising over 70 state and national organizations and individuals, and led the group to a historic victory in 2018 with the successful passage of Amendment 4, a grassroots citizen's initiative which restored voting rights to over 1.4 million Floridians with past felony convictions.
  29. ^ "MacArthur Foundation Announces 2021 'Genius' Grant Winners". The New York Times. September 28, 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2021.
  30. ^ "Desmond Meade will give the commencement address for the 21st BPI Commencement". Bard Prison Initiative. May 17, 2023. Retrieved June 3, 2023.
  31. ^ RepresentUs (2020). "Unbreaking America: Justice for Sale". RepresentUs. Retrieved June 17, 2020.
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