Jacob Ogles
The Rev. Al Sharpton travels to Miami today to promote the restoration of felons’ voting rights and rally voters to the polls.
The noted civil rights voice and founding president of the National Action Network gets an early start today.
He’ll be at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of Miami Gardens for service at 7 a.m. Then he heads to New Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church at 7:45 a.m. He plans to do a radio record mid-morning before attending New Birth Baptist Church at 10:15 a.m.
The National Action Network stressed in their announcement of Sharpton’s visit that he will be in town promoting Amendment 4, which would automatically restore the voting rights for most ex-convicts once they complete restitution to the state.
That measure this year has drawn support from a broad coalition of liberal civil rights advocates like the ACLU and conservative evangelicals celebrating personal redemption such as the Christian Coalition of America.
So Sharpton, in town with that ballot measure in mind, has stressed the key reason for his visit remains raising voter turnout across the board.
“I’m out in Miami to get people out on the last day of voting no matter who they vote for,” he said during an MSNBC spot Saturday.
But it’s probably not difficult to discern who Sharpton wants to see win out on Tuesday. In August, he spoke out against Florida’s Stand Your Ground law at a Pinellas County event with all major Democratic candidates, including now-nominee Andrew Gillum, in attendance.
And Sharpton for years served as a voice in Democratic politics, running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.
And he recently declined to answer a question from Buzzfeed News on whether he’s considering challenging Republican President Donald Trump in 2020.
At age 64, the New York minister remains one of the most prominent minority leaders in the nation.
