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Speaker 1: George W. Bush in his 2004 State of the Union address said...
George W. Bush: America is the land of second chance. And when the gates of the prison open,
the path ahead should lead to a better life. Speaker 3: There are today two million people
in prison and jails in the United States. Astronomical rate of growth. When I got out
of prison thirty years ago, it was two-hundred and thirty-nine thousand people. That's like
three times the size of the United States Marine Corps.
Speaker 4: I happen to spend several years in prison, myself. If a person serves their
time and then becomes a productive member of society, then how come they're not allowed
to vote? Speaker 5: I realize it was important to participate
in the voting process when I was standing there in the courtroom and thought about the
impact of the sentencing guidelines. You don't think of how these laws impact you until you're
standing there. Speaker 6: We've got record numbers of people
who'll be coming home this year. Six hundred thousand people. That's over half a million
people. Speaker 7: You come home bitter, frustrated,
and then they tell you, "No, you can't vote." Speaker 6: When we've got those kind of numbers,
we need to fully engage those people in being good citizens.
Speaker 7: When the system disregards you, you have a tendency to disregard it and fight
back. And it creates a divide. Speaker 8: I still do not understand why we
do not have the right to vote. Especially people that have proven themselves in society.
Speaker 3: Society in its own enlightened self-interest ought to say, "Let's find a
way to bring them back in to the communities." Speaker 9: I believe that I am living the
typical American dream without the right to be able to participate in that dream.
Speaker 10: This is taxation without representation, one of the fundamental principles around which
the Revolution was fought.