Meade said the fellowships demonstrate the potential in anyone who might have been struggling at some time. What’s more, art historian and curator Nicole Fleetwood of New York City won for her efforts to reveal and showcase artwork done by and about incarcerated people. His friend Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet and lawyer from New Haven, Connecticut, also won, for his work promoting humanity and rights for people who are or have been incarcerated. Meade is not the only felon - he prefers the term returning citizen - to win. The move also eliminated the five-year waiting period before felons can apply for restoration. On the same day, DeSantis and the Cabinet, sitting as the Clemency Board, adopted an “automatic process”to speed up the restoration of rights for felons who have completed all terms of their sentence, including paying fines and fees. DeSantis said Meade could go through the regular process to apply to have his civil rights restored. Ron DeSantis for the second time denied a pardon for Meade, saying it was because of Meade’s dishonorable discharge from the U.S. In March, as the Florida Phoenix reported at the time, Gov. Meade, of Orlando, led a grassroots effort for many years that culminated in 2018 with statewide passage of Amendment 4 to the Florida Constitution, restoring voting rights for as many as 1.4 million Florida felons such as himself, though his rights are still being withheld. “This is huge,” said Meade, who is founder, president, and executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago is awarded to “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals” throughout the country who show “promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments,” and who show the “potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”Įach fellowship comes with a no-strings-attached $625,000 “genius grant.” Civil rights activist Desmond Meade - the face and driving force behind efforts to force Florida to restore voting rights to felons - has been named a 2021 MacArthur Fellow.