Commissioner Nikki Fried Releases MLK Day Proclamation, Podcast with Desmond Meade

Tallahassee, Fla. – Today, in recognition of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day national holiday, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried released a special FDACS Podcast featuring Desmond Meade, Executive Director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and the renowned voting rights activist behind Amendment 4.

Meade and Commissioner Fried discuss Florida’s broken clemency system for restoring civil and voting rights, as well as Meade’s personal journey of redemption and what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy means to him. Fried, a member of Florida’s Clemency Board, is a vocal critic of the state’s “crushingly restrictive” rights restoration process through which just 31 Floridians have earned back voting rights since 2019, compared to 234,000 Floridians under the prior three administrations.

The 31-minute podcast can be listened to here on Spotify.

Later today, Commissioner Fried will present a Cabinet Proclamation declaring January 18 as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the State of Florida. The presentation will come during a virtual ceremony hosted by Palm Beach Atlantic University and the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County.

The proclamation reads as follows:

PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS, on this day, we reflect on the extraordinary difficulties our state and nation faced during 2020, including the ongoing pandemic that has claimed lives and livelihoods; an

WHEREAS, Americans also faced the deep-seated challenges of racial injustice and discrimination, the existence of which can no longer be concealed or rationalized; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. championed equity for all Americans as he declared, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”; and

WHEREAS, while strides towards justice and equality have been made, we recognize there remains significant work to do in Florida and America; and

WHEREAS, voting rights are human rights, and central to addressing the inequity condemned by Dr. King is to remove unnecessary barriers to the vote and equal participation in our cherished democratic process; and

WHEREAS, Florida’s clemency system for the restoration of civil and voting rights is broken, and since January 2019, the call to replace arbitrary and crushingly restrictive clemency rules for a fair process rooted in justice has been made; and

WHEREAS, freedom cannot truly ring until our policies echo the innate equality of all persons enshrined by our laws and our humanity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Nicole Fried, Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of Florida, do hereby proclaim that January 18, 2021, shall be known, designated, and set aside as

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY

in the State of Florida and encourage all Floridians to commit themselves to the causes of equity, inclusion, and justice in our state, and to the legacy of Dr. King.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of Florida to be affixed at Tallahassee, the Capital, this 18th day of January, in the year two thousand twenty-one.

NICOLE FRIED

COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE

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