[img]2337|right|Ms. Margueritte LaMotte||no_popup[/img]State Assemblymember Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City) has joined with his Assembly and Legislative Black Caucus colleagues – Assembly members Cheryl Brown, Steve Bradford, Chris Holden, Reginald Jones-Sawyer and Isadore Hall – to urge the six-member Los Angeles School Board to call a special election to fill the vacant District 1 Board seat and unexpired term of the Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte. She died on Dec. 5.
In a letter signed by six of the caucus’s nine members, Mr. Ridley-Thomas and his colleagues wrote, “Voting rights and the ability of a community to choose its own representation are fundamental to democracy… we strongly urge the Board of Education to support the time honored standard of equal protection under law by calling a special election to fill the vacancy in the First District at your January Special Meeting.”
School Board members will convene Tuesday for a special meeting to decide whether to call a special election in District 1 or appoint a representative to fill Ms. LaMotte’s seat until the June 2015 elections.
The two-paragraph letter:
We, the undersigned members of the California Black Legislative Caucus, do affirm the hard-fought rights of self-determination for the people of South Los Angeles in the Los Angeles Unified School District’s First District.
Voting rights and the ability of a community to choose its own representation are fundamental to democracy. To that end, we strongly urge the Board of Education to support the time-honored standard of equal protection under the law by calling a special election to fill the vacancy in your First District at your January Special Meeting.
Mr. MacFarlane may be contacted at fredmacfarlane@mac.com
