MORROW, Ga. — Protesters are expected to show up and speak up at the Morrow City Council meeting in Clayton County Tuesday night to express their anger at Councilmember Dorothy Dean.
They’re angry at Dean for calling Councilmember Van Tran “un-American” at the previous Council meeting two weeks ago because Tran wants the city to print voting ballots in other languages in addition to English.
The Council Tuesday night will not decide the issue, but it is causing intense discussion.
It all started when Tran tried to find out if the federal Voting Rights Act might now require the city to begin printing voting ballots in Vietnamese and Spanish, in addition to English, because of the growth of those minority populations in Morrow, with so many of them becoming U.S. citizens and eligible to vote.
Other states have had ballots in multiple languages for years.
“We should encourage them to get involved, to vote, and to raise their voice, and to keep our democracy,” Tran said Monday.
Tran, completing her first four-year term as a City Councilmember, was born in Vietnam and became a U.S. citizen in 2011. But at the most recent City Council meeting, on July 11, Councilmember Dorothy Dean called Tran un-American for suggesting that for Morrow.
“You, as an immigrant American, you took an oath of citizenship... in English,” Dean said, and then Dean referred to herself: “As a woman of color, who has lived in this country for 72 years, who has had to march, stand in line to protest, to get the right to vote... you (Van Tran) do not deserve to sit on that dais as an elected official. You have failed in your oath of office, you have failed as a citizen of this country... I would like to say that is un-American, and inexcusable. Shame on you, Van Tran.”
The mayor adjourned the council meeting before Tran could respond, but Tran told 11Alive on Monday that she plans to speak at the next Council meeting Tuesday night.
“It’s nothing un-American” about wanting ballots in multiple languages, she said, “there is actually nothing that is more American than helping the citizens, American citizens, to give them to accessibility, to assist them so they can fulfill their civil rights, their right to vote.”
Other members of the City Council have not spoken up one way or the other. But state legislators are blasting Dean in a public statement.
Twenty-six members of the AAPI, Hispanic and Black caucuses of the Georgia General Assembly, including Rep. Yasmine Neal--the chair of the Clayton County legislative delegation—and Rep. Michelle Au of Johns Creek, said in their statement that minorities should work together to make voting more accessible for everyone.
“The sort of hurtful notion that immigrants are somehow less American, and to some people, maybe less deserving of those rights” is wrong, Rep. Au said Monday. “American citizens should be able to access that most American of rights, which is being able to vote, whether or not their first language is English.... This issue of having multilingual ballot access is critically important for many members of our community, and this is something that many minority groups can actually agree on. So we want to make sure that we have people from all three of the minority caucuses in the legislature representing and making it clear that this is a priority for all of us and that this should not be an issue that drives a wedge between us, rather something we should be able to work together on, easily."
Councilmember Dean had not, as of Monday night, responded to 11Alive’s requests for an interview.
Councilmember Tran said she hopes to get a legal opinion soon on whether the federal Voting Rights Act might now require Morrow to print ballots in multiple languages.