We Need to Build a Voting-Rights Movement | The Nation





As I have been saying to everyone racism in America is permanent, it is the glue that holds the class structure together. The day an immigrant arrives from Ireland, Italy or Russia they are told that they are white and better than Black people. After the election of 2008 the powers that be noticed that Black people voted at a higher rate than White people. The numbers were significant. Since then there has been an open, concerted effort by Republicans to reduce primarilyAfrican America votes and those of young people. The Republican Supreme Court has gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Scalia and Alito most vehemently have tried to limit the right to vote. This happened in the 1890s. My great grandfather and his father saw their votes taken away. My grandfather was given Latin to read so he would fail a literacy test only given to Blacks.



"The spring of 1966 was a harrowing yet hopeful period in America’s electoral history. In March of that year, the Voting Rights Act survived a Supreme Court challenge from the attorney general of South Carolina. Civil-rights campaigners could finally breathe at least a tentative sigh of relief as public officials across the country began initial preparations for the first federal election following passage of the landmark law for which King and countless others had toiled for years.





Fast-forward 50 years, and the scene is just as harrowing, but—tragically—far less hopeful. Voter-suppression tactics in 2016 are spreading like a virus in our body politic. In the first presidential primaries since the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the VRA and opened the floodgates for passage of voter-suppression laws in states, the impacts are already evident. Whereas voting rights were ascendant in 1966, voter-suppression tactics are spreading in 2016. Whereas Congress was moving in the right direction in 1966, in 2016, it’s often conspicuously absent.



The challenge this year—the 50th anniversary of the implementation of the VRA—isn’t just protecting free and open access to the ballot; it is also rekindling the fire that forced federal action on voting rights. This means reigniting a national movement for restoration of the Voting Rights Act, vigorous federal enforcement of electoral rights, and a reversal of anti-democratic state voter-suppression laws. With our country at a political turning point, time is of the essence."



We Need to Build a Voting-Rights Movement | The Nation