Jeff Sessions: An Agent of White Supremacy, Attacks on Immigrants and Women, a Piece of Trump’s “Legion of Doom”
Tuesday morning, RefuseFascism.org Co-Initiator Carl Dix and several other protesters disrupted Senator Sessions confirmation hearing and were removed in handcuffs. Dix was dragged out chanting, “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA.” Another RefuseFascism.org protester was dragged out saying: “We refuse to accept a fascist America. We have to be in the streets starting January 14 to stop the Trump/Pence fascist regime from coming to power.” The hearing was disrupted several other times by Refuse Fascism people, and also by protesters dressed as KKK’ers, Code Pink activists with signs “End racism, stop Sesssions,” immigrants rights activists, and people chanting “Black Lives Matter!”
Three things stand out about the man Trump is naming to be the country’s “top law enforcement officer”.
ONE: Sessions is a lifelong racist; he is steeped in the culture of white supremacy, and has for decades used the powers of his offices to impose it. He has contempt for immigrants, and thinks that all immigrants, whether legal or “illegal”, create “cultural problems” in this country. He has voted to restrict abortion rights at every opportunity he’s had, “given a pass” to violent assaults on abortion clinics, and doesn’t think grabbing a woman’s genitals is sexual assault.
Sessions first gained national attention in 1981 when he was a U.S. Attorney in Alabama. He tried to railroad three Black civil rights workers on fabricated charges of “voter fraud”. They faced over 100 years in federal prison, but were acquitted after a very short jury deliberation.
A few months later, Ronald Reagan tried to elevate Sessions to a position as a federal judge. Sessions was not approved by the Senate then, mainly because elements of his racist past came out. This included his statement of approval for the KKK: he said he “used to think the Ku Klux Klan was OK until I learned they were pot smokers.”
TWO: Sessions made his name in the Senate by being utterly opposed to all attempts at “immigration reform” that would include any possibility of providing a “pathway to citizenship”, or even temporary legal status, for immigrants. He is, in the words of the head of an immigration reform group, “the most anti-immigrant senator in the chamber”.
Sessions wants to dramatically reduce all immigration, as well as deporting people in the U.S. without papers. He thinks the U.S.’s changing demography – meaning that white people are fewer proportionally than they were a few decades ago – is a danger that must be reversed. As characterized by a critic, Sessions thinks his efforts to attack and deport immigrants, and to prevent further immigration is a “fight for the soul and identity of America”, not a “policy disagreement”.
THREE: Sessions has a “100% pro-life (translation – anti woman, anti-right to abortion) voting record…”) and has consistently voted for ‘pro-life’ legislation and in opposition to taxpayer funding of abortions”. He also voted to defund Planned Parenthood. He opposes Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court ruling that established a woman’s right to abortion.)
Sessions opposes the right to marriage between same sex people. He voted to amend the U.S. Constitution so that it defines marriage as being between one woman and one man. He voted against the Mathew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act which says violence against people because of their sexual orientation and gender identity is a crime.
Jeff Sessions, this mild mannered “Southern gentleman”, who Donald Trump is “unbelievably impressed” with, is thoroughly white supremacist, woman hating, gay and lesbian despising. A fitting addition to Trump’s Legion of Doom – that must be prevented from ruling.