Desmond Meade

Desmond Meade (born July 22, 1967) is a voting rights activist and Executive Director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.[1] As chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy, Meade led the successful effort to pass Florida Amendment 4, a 2018 state initiative that restored voting rights to over 1.4 million Floridians with previous felony convictions.[2] In April 2019, Time magazine named Meade as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[3] In June 2020, Meade was featured in a RepresentUs video focused on highlighting problems with America's criminal justice system.[4]

Desmond Meade
NationalityAmerican
EducationFlorida International University College of Law, Miami Dade College
OccupationExecutive Director, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition
Known forVoting Rights
Spouse(s)Sheena Meade
ChildrenXandre, Xavier, Xzion, Xcellence, Nathan
AwardsTime 100 2019 - 100 Most Influential People in the World, Orlando Sentinel Central Floridian of the Year 2018
WebsiteFlorida Rights Restoration Coalition

Biography

According to The New York Times, Meade "was born in St. Croix and moved to Miami with his parents when he was 5. His mother worked as a waitress, and his father was a mechanic."[5] He graduated from high school in 1985, then joined the Army as a helicopter mechanic.[5] While in the Army, he began using cocaine, a habit that escalated into years of drug use, other crimes, and imprisonment. In 2005, after being released from prison, he checked himself into a drug treatment program and began to rebuild his life.[5]

Meade graduated from Miami-Dade College in 2010 and finished law school at Florida International University in 2013.[5] Florida law, however, prevented him (or anyone with a past felony conviction) from voting or being admitted to the Florida Bar.[6]

Felon disenfranchisement in Florida
Main article: Felon disenfranchisement in Florida

Florida as of 2018 was one of only three US states to deny voting rights to anyone with a felony record.[7] Because felon disenfranchisement is part of Florida's Constitution, which requires a 60% vote to modify, many efforts to restore voting rights to former convicts had been unsuccessful,[5][7] but Florida Amendment 4 passed with 64.55% of the vote. On January 8, 2019, an estimated 1.4 million ex-felons became eligible to vote.[8]

Awards & Honors
  • Time 100 Most Influential People in 2019
  • Fast Company 100 Most Creative People 2019
  • Orlando Sentinel 2019 Central Floridian of the Year
  • University of Florida's Bob Graham Center for Public Service's 2019 Floridian of the Year
  • Miami Dade College Hall of Fame

References
  1. "About Us". FRRC. Florida Rights Restoration Council. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  2. "Florida Amendment 4, Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative (2018)". Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia.org. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  3. "100 Most Influential People 2019". Time.com. Time Inc. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  4. RepresentUs (2020). "Unbreaking America: Justice for Sale". RepresentUs. Retrieved June 17, 2020.
  5. Bazelon, Emily (September 26, 2018). "Will Florida's Ex-Felons Finally Regain the Right to Vote?". NY Times. Retrieved September 12, 2020. To its supporters, Amendment 4 represents a potential civil rights triumph: It could enfranchise more people at once than any single initiative since women’s suffrage... More than one in five black voters can’t vote in Florida, compared with about one in 10 voters in the state’s general population (and one in 40 nationwide).
  6. Daley, David (May 3, 2020). "How Desmond Meade built a movement that restored voting rights in Florida — almost". Salon. Retrieved September 12, 2020. As president and founder of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, launched in the early 2010s after nearly a decade of organizing work by the Florida ACLU, the Brennan Center and the Sentencing Project around restoring voting rights to former felons they prefer to call "returning citizens," Meade led one of the most impressive grassroots petition drives in state history.
  7. Robles, Frances (November 7, 2018). "1.4 Million Floridians With Felonies Win Long-Denied Right to Vote". NY Times. Retrieved September 12, 2020. Florida was one of just three remaining states — the others being Iowa and Kentucky — that prevented people with felony records from voting.
  8. "Florida ex-felons can begin registering to vote as Amendment 4 takes effect". CBS News. January 8, 2019. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
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