Change is happening not just here in Mississippi, but in states all across the South. In South Carolina and Georgia, my fellow Black Democratic candidates Jaime Harrison and Rev. Raphael Warnock are also running people-powered campaigns for the U.S. Senate.

The November election is our chance to elect bold new leaders in the South to take our country forward. That’s why my brothers and I wrote an op-ed for BET sharing our vision for a New South, and I wanted to make sure you saw it.

But first, real quick, is there any chance you can chip in just $10 to our campaign to help us win in Mississippi and build a New South together? [[link removed]]

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In the Deep South, recent calls for equality and equity in the way our law enforcement treats American citizens have ricocheted from state to state — from the quiet streets of rural towns like Loganville, Georgia and Petal, Mississippi, to the glittering metropolises that drive our Southern economies.

These watershed moments of public outcry are a sign of people feeling unheard and underrepresented, and decisions our leaders make today can have wide-ranging impacts on the lived experiences of Black Americans. For the first time in history, we’re seeing people in all 50 states stand together to protest the racial injustices that have become all too common in our country.

Representation matters. And for its entire history, the United States Senate has failed to represent the racial diversity of our nation. This is particularly notable for states in the Deep South, which feature some of the largest Black populations in the United States. Yet since Reconstruction, the Deep South has only sent one African-American to the United States Senate.

Our same states, the ones we call home, have a long history of sordid racial legacies. We know it all too well as men who grew up under laws designed to keep people like us from having a seat at the table. Those public policies for decades have either forgotten Black communities or willfully ignored them. Schools in African-American areas are underfunded, and communities of color are at higher risk to have dilapidated infrastructure, like water systems across the rural Deep South with high lead levels.

Gone are poll taxes and grandfather clauses, but voting rights continue to be under attack in far more secretive, subversive ways like Voter ID laws. Black Americans in the South are punished with harsher sentences compared to white Americans, who commit the same crime. Look no further than the coronavirus pandemic to see this inequality in full form. Hospitalization rates for Black Americans with COVID are five times the rate of white Americans sick with the virus.

But, at this pivotal moment in our nation, we have the unique opportunity before us to turn momentum into results — to turn chants on the streets into laws on the books.

Our campaigns represent the rising of a New South that is bold, inclusive, and forward-looking. The kind of South — and a Deep South in particular — that can move past the darkest chapters of our history and look towards a future that leaves nobody behind. To deliver this change, we need to change who represents us.

You can help change who represents the people of Mississippi in the U.S. Senate this November: Make a contribution of $10 or whatever you can to support me in my race to replace Cindy Hyde-Smith and usher in a new era for the Magnolia State and the South as a whole.

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Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Paid for by Mike Espy for U.S. Senate
Mike Espy for U.S. Senate
4450 Old Canton Rd, Suite 205
Jackson, MS 39211
United States
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