2018 Convention Booklet

2018-R.2 Resolution – Addressing Felony Disenfranchisement in Virginia

Sponsors: The Rev. R. Raymond Moore, Priest and Ms. Joan Boyd Short, Member of Christ Church – Big Stone Gap; the Rev. Preston W. Mitchell, Deacon in the Abingdon Convocation; the Rev. Susan Peyton, Deacon in the Augusta Convocation; the Rev. Bill Bumgarner, the Rev. Kay Waff, and the Rev. Katharine Chase, all Deacons in the Lynchburg Convocation; Mr. Jon Greene, Deacon Candidate from the New River Valley Convocation; and The Ven. Melissa Hays-Smith, Archdeacon Whereas The Episcopal Church in its document “Becoming the Beloved Community”, has played an important leadership role during 2017 in efforts across the wider church to dismantle institutional racism, including efforts by the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia; Whereas the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia sponsored three workshops across the diocese entitled Pursuing Beloved Community: A Continuing Conversation on Race presented by Dr. Wornie Reed , Director of the Race and Social Policy Research Center and Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech, during which Dr. Reed raised the issue of institutional racism in Virginia through Felony Disenfranchisement; Whereas the 1902 Virginia Constitution included such Jim Crow laws as segregated schools, poll taxes, literacy tests, and lifelong denial of the right to vote by persons convicted of felonies (Felony Disenfranchisement) in order to suppress black political power in Virginia; Whereas the 1971 Virginia Constitution removed all the Jim Crow laws with the one exception of Felony Disenfranchisement, creating the result that black residents of Virginia currently are kept from voting at four times the rate of “nonblack” residents; Whereas Jonathan Daniels, valedictorian of the Virginia Military Institute class of 1961 in our diocese, a seminarian at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA and a saint of the Episcopal Church, was martyred in 1965 in Fort Deposit, Alabama, where he had gone to help with voter registration after hearing Dr. Martin Luther King’s plea for clergy across the country to become more involved; Whereas we as Christians profess faith based on redemption through grace and are instructed to forgive those who have committed a wrong; now, therefore, be it Resolved that the 99 th Convention of the Diocese of Southwest Virginia: 1. Finds that the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, by denying persons convicted of felonies the right to vote, is doing so in a prejudicial and racially biased way and should be amended to reinstate voting rights to all persons upon completion of their sentence for crimes they were convicted of committing; and 2. Encourages parishes and leaders around the diocese to communicate their support of this resolution as constituents to their state delegates, state senators and the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia (through letter writing, telephone calls, and in-person visits). 3. Encourages convocations to seek progress reports at their spring 2018 meetings in order to share efforts that have been made and to seek wider support of those efforts.

39