YAY MISSISSIPPI YAY!!!

       Yesterday the Mississippi senate killed HB488 the Ariziona style anti immigration bill. It's defeat gives me hope (even though one of my favorite GOP house puppets Andy Gipson is trying to revive it). Not really hope in my elected officials, many of them need to go. Since the more time I spend with them I recognize many are sheeple just going doing what someone higher ranking or a national think tank tells them to do. It's not even hope in my state government since they created the bill in the first place. It gives me hope for Mississippi and Mississippians. Never a week goes by that it seems I am in a conversation about how nothing has changed in Mississippi and we are stuck in the same dark place racially as we were forty years ago. Granted I am the first to say we have a long way to go, we have also come long way indeed. What led up to the defeat of this bill shows it.
       It took a multi-ethnic multi-generational, socio-economically and religiously diverse community to come together and say NO for this bill to go down and we did that. Mississippi Law enforcement came out against this bill along with business leaders, local politicians, and religious leaders. Who would have ever foretold that happening in this breeding ground of hate and civil liberties violations?  Members from the ACLU, NAACP, MIRA, the LGBT, and the feminist community all wrote, called, and showed up at the capitol. It has been very grassroots as well, like the young people recreating James Meredith's Walk Against Fear. This time not only fighting racism, but shining a bright light on immigrants rights too.
          So when people tell me nothing has changed in Mississippi I will have to disagree. This month MY Mississippi stood up for the rights of people. A big beautiful rainbow of people got together and fought back. We showed that indeed black, brown, white, and diverse people IN MISSISSIPPI can/will/do stand up for human rights together! From now on when people state that nothing has changed in Mississippi, how backwards we are, and that there is no hope - I can point to this. At least on this issue, in this moment I can say YAY MISSISSIPPI YAY!! There is hope for us yet :)