This evening, an extremely broad and diverse coalition of University of Kentucky organizations came together to raise awareness of Restoration of Voting Rights for former felons and took action to help pass HB 70.  Groups who organized the event included KFTC, the Latino American Student Organization, the UK Newman Center, UK NAACP, the Black Student Union, Delta Sigma Theta, UK College Democrats, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and UK Amnesty International. 

Primary speakers were former felon and KFTC Member Tayna Fogle and Representative Jesse Crenshaw, both of whom gave powerful testimony and strong arguments in support of the bill.

"People might ask - "Why would I want to help a Felon?"  I tell them that if they support this bill, what they'll be doing is helping society - all of us." Tayna Fogle.

Representative Crenshaw urged students to call the legislative message hotline (1-800-372-7181) and ask their legislators to support this bill.  He stressed that we needed to defeat the negative floor amendments presently attached to the bill.  "We need to stop these floor amendments," said Crenshaw.  "They might seem innocent, but they're all designed to weaken or kill this bill."
 

"We need your voices - the voices of young people, and students.  Most of the people in this room can vote and we need  you speak out for those of us who can't.  We need your generation to help set things straight."  Tayna Fogle

About 15 students signed up to come to the major Restoration of Voting Rights lobby day on February 28th, while over 40 took action by signing KFTC postcards, an Amnesty International Petition, and UK College Democrats letters to House Democratic Leadership. 

"It's great to learn about this, but we also need to really DO something to make it change," said Alise Marshall, holding a stack of postcards to legislators. "We need to send a clear message to our Representatives and Senators and we can start right now."

The event was a keystone event in the work on Restoration on UK's campus, but there have been many presentations on Restoration at co-sponsoring organization meetings, other group meetings, several days of community tabling to raise awareness of the issue, and even a tour of Greek houses raising awareness of this issue.  UK KFTC members plan to do a lot more outreach over the next few days to build our numbers for the major Restoration of Voting Rights Lobby Day on February 28th.

If you'd like to get involved in more events like this on UK's campus, please consider coming out to the weekly UK Kentuckians For The Commonwealth Meeting every Tuesday night at 8pm in room 106 of the UK Student Center (The Center for Student Involvement).

 2/20/08 - Update - The UK Kentucky Kernel published a news story about this event today.