Selma 59th Anniversary Reminder: VOTE!

I joined the celebrations in Selma today for the 59th Anniversary of the bridge crossing.

Alabama send an urgent reminder to vote. Republican voter suppression just doesn’t hurt minorities. It also denies women their freedoms.

What happens when a small group of extremists rig the system for themselves so they can never be voted out? There is no accountability. Alabama Republicans just stole women’s freedom to use IVF and made it a crime to help your neighbor or grandmother fill out an absentee ballot.

See my Photos from Selma

Watch the video

Extremist Supreme Court takes America backwards

The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 after the violent beating of John Lewis and voting rights activists on the Edmund Pattis bridge.

John Robert’s Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in a case called Shelby county v Holder. It struck down the requirement that certain states and localities with a history of discrimination against minority voters to get changes cleared by the federal government before they went into effect. The VRA required discriminatory voting policies be blocked before they harmed voters. The law placed the burden of proof on government officials to prove why the changes they were seeking were not discriminatory. Now, voters who are discriminated against now bear the burden of proving they are disenfranchised.

Republican attack on the freedom to vote and women’s control of their bodies

“Vice President Kamala Harris told thousands gathered for the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attacks on civil rights marchers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, that fundamental freedoms, including the right to vote, are under attack in America even today. Voting rights activists were beaten back by law enforcement officers in 1965. The vice president praised the marchers’ bravery for engaging in a defining moment of the civil rights struggle.

“Today, we know our fight for freedom is not over, because in this moment we are witnessing a full on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms, starting with the freedom that unlocks all others, the freedom to vote” – MSN

Voter suppression lets a few extremists do whatever they want

The Brennan Center for Justice just reported that since John Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act: “The racial turnout gap — or the difference in the turnout rate between white and nonwhite voters — is a key way of measuring participation equality has consistently grown since 2012 and is growing most quickly in parts of the country that were previously covered under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was suspended by the Supreme Court in its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder.”

Republicans now impose new, restrictive measures like identification acts, to curtail days of early voting, and to limit help with returning an absentee or mail in ballot has impacted minority voters the most… “these restrictive voting laws generally limit the turnout of voters of color the most.” – Joyce Vance in Civil Discourse

TakeAway: VOTE! “Sign up to be a poll worker, encourage those around you to register to vote, look up your local League of Women Voters (this works for men, too!), sign up for a letter-writing campaign to voters in battleground states if you don’t live in one, or help with get-out-the-vote in your state if you do.” – Joyce Vance

Deepak
DemLabs

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Reposted from Democracy Labs with Permission