Current Event #3 - Female Lawmaker Resigns After Racial Harassment

In Vermont, Kiah Morris announced her resignment. She was the only African-American woman in the House of Representatives in Vermont. A month ago she ended her re-election bid because of the racial harassment she was getting. She posted something on facebook saying that she originally hoped she would be able to serve the rest of her term, and that “this time has proven to be one of significant challenge for my family.” Her term was supposed to end in January, but she shut down her re-election August 24. “I step away now to focus on caring for and supporting my family during this time of transition and ensure our health, safety, and well-being are prioritized.” She says. Not only was there harassment but she even had some cases of vandalism and home invasions. “We found there were swastikas painted on the trees in the woods near where we live. We had home invasions.” “It has come and gone and in different waves, but then it picked back up again and of course we are back in an election season so there’s always more.”

As you can tell Kiah Morris has had a lot of problems with racial harassment, vandalizing, and home invasions. All of these things are serious and shouldn’t just be brushed off. It's very disappointing to find out that to this day people aren’t accepting people of color as equal to us. Everyone is a human and deserves respect. No one should be treated as cruelly and if shes really that high up and has that power you really should be respecting that person. Something really should be done about this, here in America, everyone has the right to speak freely, but harassment violates the law. Vandalization also violates the law along with home invasion. This is really socially unacceptable and completely illegal. I hope that in the future this can be properly addressed in the future and that this doesn’t happen again. Everyone has rights and is equal no matter your skin tone, your shape, your size, or your differences.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/us/politics/kiah-morris-vermont.html?fallback=0&recId=1B44w7SqQsUT7dxulNwfENXwJDx&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=ME&recAlloc=contextual-bandit-home-geo&geoCountry=US&blockId=midterm-elections&imp_id=104601584

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