Passing of Rep. Julia Carson
Julia Carson, Indiana Congresswoman, dies of lung cancer at age 69.
It's rare for me to blog about a Democrat, and let me even say this from the beginning - I was neither a fan nor a supporter of the late Julia Carson, who passed away Saturday after fighting lung cancer.
It's also rare in today's political climate for me to say that even though I made the statement above, I will also say I respected Rep. Carson for many things!
Julia Carson was a fighter! She has been fighting different health battles for several years, just like she fought for the people she represented in her 7th Indiana district. Many times I would see her on the news and shake my head at one of her positions I disagreed with, but you couldn't help but like her spunk!
In an editorial in the Indianapolis Star it says,
"She worked hard for her constituents, often through debilitating illness. She voted her convictions. And she took raps -- for her ideological stance, her attendance and her sometimes bare-knuckled campaigning."
In the same article, former Congressman Andrew Jacobs, Jr., who was her predecessor said,
"She doesn't represent poor people; she represents justice," Jacobs said near the end of her career. "She knows rich people can be treated unjustly by their government as well."
If anyone was ever an example that where you come from doesn't have to dictate what you make of yourself. Rep. Carson was it - as this bit of background on her shows:
Born in poverty and racial segregation to a teenage single mother, Julia Porter Carson rose rung by rung to power and prestige via urban grass-roots politics. Along the way, she never forgot whence she came -- or,
more precisely, she never left. A failed marriage left her to rear two children and two grandchildren as a single mother. The perspective she commanded was rare in an elected official; and it was sympathetic without being
sentimental.
Representative Julia Carson's body will lay in state at the Indiana Statehouse Rotunda on Friday.
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