Groups: Plots To Disenfranchise Voters Underway

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com

A coalition of civil rights organizations are taking aim at political and legislative voter suppression efforts which, they say, create a recipe for massive disenfranchisement of minorities and youth in the 2012 election.

At a news conference Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the coalition led by Rainbow PUSH and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said it was seeking a meeting with the Justice Department to determine how it will address challenges to a fundamentally American right.

“It’s a strange setting for me, having been in Selma in 1965 fighting for the right to vote,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, noting that after the civil rights movement fought and won battles over challenges to voting on the basis of race, gender and poverty, the movement now finds itself fighting to stave off the reversal of those victories. CONTINUE....

Why African-Americans Prefer Post-1965 America

Image via Wikipedia

By David A. Love

Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) thinks that America was on point before 1965. Recently, the hardline conservative -- who just became a contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination -- expressed his sentiments at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, DC. According to Santorum, things were just fine in the U.S. before the creation of the welfare state. And he claims that President Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism.

"Social conservatives understand that America was a great country because it was founded great," Santorum told the crowd. "Our founders, calling upon in the Declaration of Independence, the supreme judge, calling upon divine providence, said what was at the heart of American exceptionalism...'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.'"

"He was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, and it was in response to the Ryan budget," Santorum said, referring to Obama. "And he said this, talking about these three programs: He said 'America is a better country because of these programs. I will go a one step further: America is a great country because of these programs." CONTINUE....

How Clarence Thomas Gave Blacks the Finger - Again

By: Tonyaa Weathersbee

This week, Clarence Thomas delivered a shocker in the high court’s decision against draining the lifeblood pumping through the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

He actually outdid his arch-conservative overseer, Antonin Scalia, in giving black folks the middle finger.

By an 8 to 1 vote, the high court decided that the time wasn’t quite right to discard a provision of the act that requires most Deep South states and more than 12,000 municipalities to seek permission from the Justice Department before changing polling places or times or reshaping electoral districts or any number of other things that could make it tough for blacks or other minorities to cast votes.

How Clarence Thomas Gave Blacks the Finger - Again....

The 100th Day Threat to Voting Rights

While the press was reviewing President Obama’s scorecard and Senate Democrats were welcoming Arlen Specter, the Supreme Court was weighing scaling back voter protections. Here’s why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is in serious jeopardy.

By: Sherrilyn A. Ifill

On the 100th day of the first term of the first black president of the United States, lawyers for a small utility district in Travis County, Texas, walked up the steps of the Supreme Court Building to ask the nine justices of the court to dismantle a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Ironies abound.

Without the Voting Rights Act, there would be no President Obama. When it was passed, the Voting Rights Act, known as “the crown jewel of the civil rights movement,” began the process of fully realizing the promise of the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, which in 1870 extended the right to vote to African Americans, or at least to African-American men. In the years between 1870 and 1965, however, the vast majority of blacks were largely disenfranchised by Southern legislators and jurisdictions that used intimidation, arcane registration practices, gerrymandering, poll taxes and violence to keep the black population from exercising the franchise. The Voting Rights Act was a result of the literal blood, sweat and tears of civil rights activists, among them Medgar Evers; Fannie Lou Hamer; Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner; and a young John Lewis, who nearly lost his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

The enactment and enforcement of the Voting Rights Act ensured the enfranchisement of black voters across the South and, over the years, made possible the election of over 10,000 black officials at every level of public office, from school boards to Congress, including Lewis. Over the past 40 years, black elected officials have become an integral part of the political landscape of the country. Consequently, white voters have become accustomed to the experience of black political leadership, and black voters have been organized and mobilized at unprecedented levels. These key developments laid the groundwork for the impressive, if unsuccessful, runs of Jesse Jackson for president in the 1980s and the ultimately successful candidacy of Barack Obama last year.

The 100th Day Threat to Voting Rights....