In a powerful new campaign ad, US Senate candidate Gary Chambers burns a confederate flag as a way of promoting removing the lingering vestiges of the Confederacy and its ideals once and for all.
“Here in Louisiana and all over the South, Jim Crow never really left, and the remnants of the Confederacy remain,” Chambers says.
He goes on to talk briefly of P.B.S. Pinchback, a Black man that was elected to the US Senate from Louisiana in 1873. Pinchback was had previously served as acting governor – the only Black governor of any state during Reconstruction. Using what has become a familiar cry in modern times – election fraud – Pinchback was denied his senate seat. The US Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections blocked him from ever taking office.
“The attacks against Black people, our right to vote and participate in this democracy are methodical. Gerrymandered districts are a byproduct of the Confederacy,” Chambers notes. “Our system isn’t broken, it’s designed to do exactly what it’s doing, which is producing measurable inequity.”
Currently in America:
- 1 in 13 Black Americans of voting age are disenfranchised
- 14.2 percent of Black Americans are uninsured (Chambers’ ad states 1 in 9, however, an article claiming this fact cited here appears to have been removed).
- 1 in 3 Black children live in poverty
“It’s time to burn what remains of the Confederacy down,” Chambers states. “I do believe the South will rise again. But this time, it’ll be on our terms.”
