Ohio is a strange place sometimes. It can be conservative and often backwards, and yet that same tree bares some of the most progressive liberal fruit in the nation. When all of the Democratic Party was too cowed and too pathetic to call for President Bush's impeachment it was the voice of an Ohioan, Dennis Kucinich, that demanded justice.
And so too one of the most heart wrenching moments in the 2004 election was when thousands of black American's were disenfranchised - their Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote stripped - along with voting irregularities stacked atop voting irregularities, and absentee ballots (including my own) left uncounted that Stephanie Tubbs Jones from the great state of Ohio had the courage and tenacity to call into question the authenticity of the vote, and (for all intensive purposes) stood alone.
Tubbs Jones died today in Cleveland. She was a self described "liberal Democrat". Aside from her courage and dedication to the progressive movement, I will remember her for her very funny appearance on the Colbert Report's "Better Know a District". She was a needed voice of the progressive movement in a party of cowards and appeasers. The Democratic Party and our Nation is weaker because of her passing.
She will be missed.
