tag:newamericamedia.org,2009-04-06://19 2013-05-06T22:46:50Z New America Media is a nationwide association of over 3000 ethnic media organizations representing the development of a more inclusive journalism. Founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service, New America Media promotes ethnic media by strengthening the editorial and economic viability of this increasingly influential segment of America's communications industry. tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11381 2013-05-06T22:43:00Z 2013-05-06T22:46:50Z

News One ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Anyone keen on the Supreme Court’s on-going arguments over the legality of certain parts of the Voter Rights Act surely has not forgotten Justice Antonio Scalia‘s “racial entitlement” remarks from earlier this year–especially “The Crisis,” the NAACP’s flagship publication.

“I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about, Scalia said of the Act during a hearing back in February.

“Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

The award-winning magazine pulled no punches with its response, using its cover to feature an illustration of Justice Scalia with a Confederate flag bandana wrapped around his mouth. The conservative’s eyes peer ominously through his thinly-framed eye glasses, evoking worst memories from the era in which the original Voter Right’s Act was born.

The cover is very hard-hitting, but The Crisis’ Editor-in-Chief, Jabari Asim, told NewsOne, “we thought his comments were hard-hitting and deserved that kind of response. I think that voting rights is one of those principles that the Crisis, African-Americans, and the NAACP all hold sacred. The memory of people who died for our right to vote remains fresh in many of our consciences and I think in that instance when you dare to be that irreverent and that disrespectful of the lessons of history that’s the kind of response you earn.”

Read the rest at News One
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11195 2013-03-28T10:00:00Z 2013-03-28T17:44:13Z

NEW YORK -- While Asian Americans turned out in record numbers in the 2012 presidential elections, a high number of Korean American voters faced voting problems, according to a new analysis by the Asian American Legal Defense Fund (AALDEF) released...

Anthony Advincula ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 new analysis by the Asian American Legal Defense Fund (AALDEF) released Wednesday.

The analysis was based on interviews with nearly 1000 Korean American voters in six states with a large Korean population, a subset of data from a 14-state multilingual exit poll of 9,096 Asian American voters, conducted by AALDEF after the 2012 election.

The recent analysis, which provides a snapshot of Korean American voters, found that among those surveyed, 337 said they were asked to show an ID, even though only 65 were first-time voters.

According to the data, many incidents of discrimination against Korean American voters occurred. In Virginia, they were put in segregated voting lines. In Georgia, Korean Americans were note allowed to vote, because they were not able to provide documentation of U.S. citizenship under the state’s new proof-of-citizenship law.

For example, under the Georgia’s new policy, first-time voters and those who register by mail are required not only to present a birth certificate, U.S. passport, naturalization papers or a driver's license, but also to provide additional forms of identification such as a bank statement, current bill, government check, paycheck or other government-issued document that shows the name and address of the voter.

Glenn Magpantay, democracy program director for AALDEF, said that because of the voting barriers that Korean Americans experienced, his organization and Korean-American community groups have called on Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to veto two bills— SB 1256 and HB 1337— that restrict the forms of acceptable identification that voters may present at election polls.

These bills would, Magpantay said, “prevent hundreds of thousands of eligible Virginians from voting.”

The AALDEF analysis also showed that dozens of Korean American voters complained about the lack of translators and interpreters at polling precincts, and nearly two dozen said they were asked to prove their U.S. citizenship.

Other barriers cited by Korean American voters include missing or misspelled names in the list of voters, and complaints of incompetent and hostile poll workers.

Among Asian subgroups, Korean American voters needed the most language assistance, the study found, which contributed to voting problems: more than two-thirds of them have limited English proficiency, compared to 37 percent of all Asian Americans nationally.

While Asian American voters are often lumped together, AALDEF Executive Director Margaret Fung says, the new data offers a snapshot of Korean American voters as a distinct part of that voting bloc.

A majority (84 percent) of Korean American voters were foreign-born and naturalized U.S. citizens, while 16 percent of them were born in the United States. A fifth of them voted for the first-time in 2012, according to the study.

With views, perhaps, shaped by their own immigrant experience, nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of Korean Americans backed immigration reform compared to just under half of Vietnamese voters (49 percent) and 57 percent of Chinese voters.

“Asian Americans are a diverse community with a varying social, political and economic backgrounds,” Fung said. “The poll provides much needed data on Asian American voting trends, especially as our community’s political influence continues to grow.”


]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11156 2013-03-20T13:05:38Z 2013-03-20T17:53:31Z

Photo: Staff and volunteers from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fundon on National Voter Registration Day 2012.After the 2012 elections, political leaders across the country recognized the Asian Pacific Islander community and its ability to influence local, state...

Glenn Magpantay ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Photo: Staff and volunteers from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fundon on National Voter Registration Day 2012.

After the 2012 elections, political leaders across the country recognized the Asian Pacific Islander community and its ability to influence local, state and national races. Yet in several states, legislatures have adopted laws that effectively disenfranchise members of these communities. 

Arizona, Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee, and Georgia – home to sizable and growing API and Latino communities -- now require voters to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. At least twelve other states are considering passing similar laws. 

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, involving a suit brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund challenging Arizona’s proof of citizenship law.

The law is, on its face, patently absurd. There have been almost no documented incidents of non-citizens voting in U.S. elections.  All voter registration forms contain sufficient safeguards that prevent non-citizens from registering, including heavy fines and imprisonment.  Non-citizens who simply complete a voter registration form are subject to deportation. Who would take such a risk? 

For citizens, such laws make registration more onerous and segregate naturalized and native-born into two separate voter registration processes. While citizens born in the country are allowed to mail in copies of their birth certificates along with their voter registration applications, naturalized citizens must register in-person and bring their original naturalization certificates to the county registration offices.

Asian Americans are disproportionately affected by these laws. Almost 40 percent of Asian Americans in Arizona are foreign-born naturalized citizens, compared to only about 5 percent of white citizens in the state. 

Make no mistake about it; these laws are intended to disenfranchise minority voters.  States that have already adopted or are considering proof-of-citizenship laws, moreover, all have fast-growing Asian American populations that are outpacing the states’ total population growth rates. 

They also have histories of explicit anti-Asian discrimination. During WWII Arizona, like California, interred its Japanese resident population. Kansas’ Alien Land Law, which banned Asian immigrants from inheriting property, was only repealed in 2002. Georgia’s recent anti-immigrant legislation bars many young people from attending college.

Given these histories, the motivation behind laws that limit voting can only be seen as suspect.

After the 2012 election, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) conducted a 14-state, multilingual Election Protection study. In it, 249 voters complained that they were inappropriately required to prove their U.S. citizenship before being allowed to vote. In Georgia alone, the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center discovered that 282 voter registration applications were not processed because additional proof of citizenship was required. 

In the Arizona suit, AALDEF filed an amicus brief on behalf of 12 Asian American organizations that conduct voter registration drives in states with laws similar to Arizona’s or whose state legislatures are considering such laws. Naturalized citizens in these states will no longer be able to register at these drives, as a result of these laws.

Before Monday’s hearing Justices indicated that the National Voter Registration Act – adopted by Congress to eliminate state requirements that disenfranchise minority voters -- may indeed trump Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship law. 

As a nation, we should be encouraging voter participation, not curtailing it. The U.S. Supreme Court should strike down Arizona’s proof of citizenship law and send a strong message that this new type of voter suppression has no place in our democracy. 
 
Glenn D. Magpantay is Director of AALDEF’s Democracy Program. Founded in 1974, AALDEF is a national organization that works to protect and promote the civil rights of Asian Americans through litigation, advocacy, education, and organizing.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11039 2013-02-25T10:45:00Z 2013-03-26T19:38:25Z

Khalil Abdullah ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=69 Traducción al español
한국어 번역

Editor's Note: The Supreme Court hears oral arguments on a lawsuit that could upend Section 5
of the Voting Rights Act. The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, one of the country's leading authorities on voting rights issues, recently convened a teleconference call panel of experts for New America Media to explore what this could mean for minority voters.


WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Kilmichael, a small town in northern Mississippi, is known to blues aficionados as the place where blues artist B.B. King first began his love affair with the guitar. To voting rights advocates, it’s a place that helps spotlight the ongoing need for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), now facing a challenge to its constitutionality in a lawsuit before the Supreme Court.

The Court will hear oral arguments on the merits of Shelby County v. Holder on February 27. A decision will most likely be rendered in June before the court’s summer recess.

“When the 2000 Census revealed that the town had become majority black for the first time, the town’s all-white board of aldermen responded by simply trying to cancel all elections in order to prevent African Americans from being elected to office,” explained Dale Ho, Assistant Counsel of the Political Participation Group, NAACP LDF.

Mississippi was, and still is, covered by Section 5, which requires certain states and jurisdictions to submit proposed changes to voting procedures to the U.S. Department of Justice or the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia. The process is called preclearance and determines whether these changes violate constitutional rights or prevent minority voters from participating in a fair election. Under Section 5, DOJ mandated a special election in Kilmichael, resulting in the town’s first African-American elected officials.

Ho cited the Kilmichael episode during a New America Media teleconference briefing on the lawsuit and the negative impact on minority voters if the Supreme Court rules in its favor. Convened by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, among the country’s leading institutional authorities on voting rights issues, the briefing included Myrna Pérez, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice; Glenn Magpantay, Democracy Program Director, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund; and Nina Perales, Vice President of Litigation, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Perez termed the VRA “among the most important civil rights laws ever enacted.” It was passed by Congress in 1965 and signed by President Lyndon Johnson as a more robust protection for minority voters, particularly for African Americans in the South, where they have been targets of voter suppression efforts since the end of the Civil War.

Provisions of the VRA, including Section 5, have been extended several times since its initial passage, most recently in 2006 when Congress voted to reauthorize it for another 25 years. The reauthorization vote was 98 to 0 in the Senate; 393 to 30 in House. It was signed into law by President George Bush as it had been under a previous Republican president, Ronald Reagan, in 1982.

In its lawsuit, Shelby County, Al., argues that Congress overstepped its constitutional bounds by voting to extend VRA and Section 5 for another 25 years. “Even if the Court gives weight to all of the evidence in the legislative record, it at most shows scattered and limited interference with Fifteenth Amendment rights in some covered jurisdictions" -- not sufficient for the Court to "sustain a remedy so intrusive as preclearance."

States covered by Section 5 have long chafed at the preclearance process because they consider it a violation of their Tenth Amendment sovereignty rights. If they can show that racial discrimination and Fifteenth Amendment violations are “scattered and limited,” then preclearance should be voided, as Shelby agues, and their sovereignty restored.

“Racial discrimination in voting is sadly a continuing fact of American life," countered Ho. Citing a DOJ study on another provision of the VRA as a barometer, Ho said, “81% of these successful voting rights lawsuits arise from the covered jurisdictions, which, in turn, are only 25% of the country…On a per capita basis, successful voting rights lawsuits are 12 times more likely to occur in the covered jurisdictions. These are precisely the places that need continuing federal remedies to prevent voting discrimination.”

Glenn Magpantay of AALDEF pointed out that with their high numbers in the states covered by Section 5 Asian Americans have a big stake in the case's outcome. Through Section 5's enforcement capacity, for example, voting rights advocates have been able to ensure that states and counties meet bilingual ballot requirements under other VRA provisions.

Redistricting continues to be one of the most contentious issues that impact minority voters. Magpantay cited the intervention by the Department of Justice in Texas where Section 5 was used to prevent the formation of a district that would have blocked Vietnamese voters from electing a candidate of their choice to the legislature.

“For Latinos,” said Nina Perales, “Texas is the poster child for the continuing vitality of Section 5.” The provision has been used to block over 200 discriminatory voting changes there since 1975. Arizona runs a close second. Since 1975 “one or more of Arizona’s statewide redistricting plans has been blocked by Section 5 because of discrimination” against Latino voters, Pareles noted.

The year 1975 was a watershed year for Latinos because the VRA was extended by Congress to cover states in the Southwest in an attempt to help remedy discriminatory practices. “Jim Crow systems in Texas and Arizona segregated Latinos in schools, jobs, and public accommodations well into the Twentieth Century,” Perales recounted. “Latinos were routinely excluded from civic life, including jury duty, voter registration, and voting at the poll.” After the 2010 Census, she noted, a Texas redistricting plan was found to discriminate not only against Mexican Americans, but African Americans and Asians Americans as well.

Ho noted another unique role Section 5 plays -- it “stops discriminatory voting laws before they go into effect." Too often, he explained, when a candidate wins office by using racially discriminatory tactics or through a system skewed in his or her favor, he or she gains the power and advantage of incumbency. Small localities like Kilmichael rarely have the financial resources to embark on lengthy civil litigation, which even if successful, may take one or even two election cycles.

Speakers on the teleconference call generally refrained from speculating about the possible outcome of the Supreme Court’s ruling, but said an abundance of evidence, including what occurred during the 2012 election cycle, demonstrate the rationale for keeping Section 5 in place.

]]> ]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11038 2013-02-24T09:30:00Z 2013-02-22T23:38:44Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103  Editor’s note: The last major challenge to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) took place ahead of last November's election, when a spate of states passed voter ID laws that would have thrown up barriers for minorities at the polls. Pushback—vigilance and mobilization—by voting and civil rights groups, however, thwarted those efforts to undermine the VRA, with some states seeing a record number of Latinos and African Americans voters at the polls. The next battle over the Voting Rights Act is moving to the Supreme Court, writes NAM contributor Earl Ofari Hutchinson.



One of the GOP’s fondest wishes has been to kill the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. Twice it floated several trial balloons in Congress. The first one was in 1981 when the Act came up for renewal. The deal in the initial passage of the Act was that it be renewed every 25 years.


A few hardline ultraconservatives in the administration of then President Reagan administration made some loud threats to push Reagan to oppose its renewal. They were just that, idle threats. Reagan with no fanfare signed the renewal legislation.

However, the threats were a forewarning of things to come. When the Act came up for renewal again in 2006, the threats to thwart the law, turned into a mini-movement in Congress to delay or even block passage. A pack of House Republicans stalled the legislation for more than a week and demanded that hearings be held.

They used the same old argument that it punishes the South for past voting-discrimination sins, and they didn't like the idea of bilingual ballots. Bush signed the renewal order. But the GOP had served notice that the early saber rattle against the act was a just a warm-up for a full throttle frontal assault. The GOP pecked at eroding the Act with the rash of photo identifications laws that the GOP governors and GOP controlled state legislatures enacted in recent years. The aim was to discourage and damp down the number of minority and poor voters that overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

It backfired. Black and Hispanic voters thumbed their noses at the GOP vote suppression ploys and packed the voting booths again in mass numbers in 2012.


The 2012 presidential election result was the final tipping point for the GOP. Though, it maintained its tight grip on the five Deep South states, and other Old Confederacy states, almost exclusively with the majority votes of white conservatives, the increased number of black and Hispanics in the states, poses a mortal threat to continued GOP dominance in those states, that is if there are no barriers propped up to their registering and voting.

The GOP’s hoped for trump card to stave that off as long as possible is the Supreme Court. The conservatives on the court read the election tea leafs and three days after President Obama’s reelection announced that they would take up a challenge to the Act. They dropped strong hints that they may well vote to gut the Act. Justice Anthony Kennedy said he was troubled by the provisions.

Chief Justice John Roberts bluntly said that things have changed in the South and that blacks supposedly vote everywhere in the South without any barriers or prohibitions. Clarence Thomas, to no surprise, went even further and flatly called Section 5 of the Act unconstitutional and left no doubt if and when he had the chance he’d knock the Act out completely.

The hook is the federal lawsuit by Shelby County, Alabama that claims the Act is outdated, discriminatory, and a blatant federal intrusion into state’s rights. The lawsuit explicitly wants the centerpiece of the Act, Section 5 dumped. This is the provision that mandates that states get “preclearance” from the Justice Department before making any changes in voting procedures. State attorneys general in several states have endorsed the Alabama County’s challenge.

The claims that the Act is a waste since blacks and Hispanics vote whenever and wherever they please is nonsense Even though black and Hispanic voters did vote in big numbers in the 2012 election, in many districts they still had to stand in endless lines, have their IDs thoroughly scrutinized, had no bilingual ballots, found voting hours shortened, and had to file legal challenges in state and federal
courts to get injunctions to stop the more onerous of the voter suppression laws from being enforced.

This was only part of the story of the roadblocks the GOP has thrown up. A study by the Alliance for Justice, a Washington DC based, public interest group, documented legions of complaints and challenges filed by the Justice Department and voting rights groups to discriminatory changes that county registrars have made to eliminate or narrow down the number of voters in predominantly minority districts.

There was never any real threat that Congress would have dared done away with the Act despite the GOP’s harsh warnings and wishes. But the action of many state officials, attorneys general and now the Supreme Court that threaten the Act is a grave warning that the GOP may finally get its fond wish. And that’s to gut, if not outright end the Voting Rights Act.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.10985 2013-02-09T09:00:00Z 2013-02-08T20:31:06Z

America stands at a crossroads. We can take the high road toward equal access to high quality public education, reaffirm our commitment to democratically elected public officials, end the failed war on drugs, recommit to the right of workers to...

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 America stands at a crossroads. We can take the high road toward equal access to high quality public education, reaffirm our commitment to democratically elected public officials, end the failed war on drugs, recommit to the right of workers to bargain for better conditions, lower our dreadful rate of hyper-incarceration and implement the affordable care act. Or we can travel in the opposite direction and move the nation away from equal opportunity and justice.

One reason our political bodies are so sharply divided is over this question of justice. Some Americans seem to believe that we have done enough to achieve justice. Others understand that the struggle for justice and equality is a continuing American project that requires patience and perseverance.

There are some disturbing trends. A decade ago there were 40 million uninsured people. Today the number is closer to 50 million. There is greater income inequality and more poverty. Average Americans have lost trillions of dollars in family wealth – largely the result of unregulated real estate markets. We have not yet regulated exotic Wall Street investments like derivatives. Our incarceration rate continues to grow; we imprison more people than any other developed nation in the world, per capita, while drugs are more plentiful and lower priced than they were a decade ago. Fewer boys are finishing college and the rate at which we produce engineers is dropping. We rank lower in health outcomes than much poorer nations. These trends must be addressed and reversed if we are to continue to prosper and lead the world.

We seem fatigued with questions of racial and ethnic justice. Affirmative action is under attack, again. Racial profiling, abuse of prosecutorial discretion, excessive use of police force, runaway juries, disparate sentencing and selective prosecution are generally accepted as normal, not exceptional. While we celebrate the promise of the Lillie Ledbetter Act, too much race discrimination lurks in our work places. Instead of looking at our immigrant population as a strength to be cultivated, we ignore, or pander to them.

Our civil rights apparatus is fraying. There is a trend away from joining and supporting organizations – churches, unions, and civil rights organizations. Rugged individualism is no substitute for institutional voices for justice and equality. Noah built an ark to withstand the flood. Those who could swim died outside the ark. Those who could not swim survived inside the ark. Good swimmers can’t swim 40 days and 40 nights. We need strong institutional bulwarks to protect us from exclusion and prejudice.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend is away from the universal franchise. The right to vote secures every other right. We are encountering stiff headwinds that threaten to undermine democracy itself. Despite “Citizens United”, money is not speech. Our elections should not be bought and sold like vacation homes and yachts. Latter day, politically driven obstacles – voter suppression – is un-American. There is no political goal that justifies dishonest schemes to disenfranchise American citizens. America is not a race, or a religion, color or language. America is built on a set of noble, but fragile premises: All men are created equal; one person-one vote; majority rule. It is these principles that make the American experiment work – undoing them could unravel the fabric of the nation.

Yet, I remain optimistic. Our union has been in the process of perfecting itself throughout its entire existence. America has been a laboratory experiment in justice and equality. The enslaved never adjusted to being considered less than human. Women never adjusted to second-class citizenship. Workers refused to acquiesce to exploitation. Seniors refused to accept the indignity of poverty after a life of industry. Young people refused to be seen and not heard. That is the genius of the American experiment – we become a better, stronger nation when we insist that the nation live with its conscience.

Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is President/CEO of the Chicago-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. This article – the fourth of a 20-part series -- is written in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today. For more information, please visit www.lawyerscommittee.org.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.10962 2013-02-04T22:05:00Z 2013-02-04T21:57:43Z

Jeanne Theoharis ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Image: The new Rosa Parks “forever stamp.”

NEW YORK--To honor the centennial of the birth of Rosa Parks on Feb. 4, 1913, the United States Postal Service has issued a Rosa Parks stamp. Last year, a stone carving of Parks was added to the National Cathedral. In 2005, she became the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the nation's Capitol and, through a special act of Congress, a statue of her was ordered placed in the Capitol.

Yet these tributes to Rosa Parks rest on a narrow and distorted vision of her legacy. As the story goes, a quiet Montgomery, Ala., seamstress with a single act challenged Southern segregation, catapulted a young Martin Luther King Jr. into national leadership and ushered in the modern civil rights movement.
Parks' memorialization promotes an improbable children's story of social change -- one not-angry woman sat down, the country was galvanized and structural racism was vanquished.

Parks’ Fable Diminishes History of Action

This fable diminishes the extensive history of collective action against racial injustice and underestimates the widespread opposition to the black freedom movement, which for decades treated Parks' political activities as "un-American." Most important, it skips over the enduring scourge of racial inequality in American society -- a reality that Parks continued to highlight and challenge -- and serves contemporary political interests that treat racial injustice as a thing of the past.

A more thorough accounting of Parks' political life offers a different set of reasons for the nation to honor her. Laboring in the 1940s and 1950s in relative obscurity, Parks and her colleague E.D. Nixon were among a small group who sought to transform Montgomery's NAACP into a more activist branch, determined to register their dissent, even if they could deal no significant blow to white supremacy.

With Nixon as NAACP branch president and Parks as secretary, they pushed for black-voter registration, legal justice and school desegregation -- and Parks traveled the state documenting white brutality and legal malfeasance. The summer before her bus stand, she attended a two-week workshop at Highlander Folk School, an interracial, adult organizer training school in Tennessee, to organize for the implementation of school desegregation.

Knowing well the cost of bus resistance (a neighbor had been killed for his resistance, the young Claudette Colvin manhandled) and having made numerous personal stands against segregation that went nowhere, Parks understood the cost, danger and likely ineffectiveness of her stand. And yet "pushed as far as [she] could stand to be pushed," she did it anyway. When, to her surprise, her arrest galvanized a mass movement, she worked hard to sustain it over the next year.

Her stand led to significant economic and personal hardship for her family. In the early days of the boycott, both Rosa and her husband, Raymond Parks, lost their jobs.

Eight months after the yearlong boycott ended, still unable to find work, in poor health and continuing to face death threats, they left Montgomery for Detroit. There she did not rest, but joined with new and old comrades to fight the racism of her new hometown and American society more broadly.

Her Hero—Malcolm X

One of the greatest distortions of the Parks fable is the way it portrays her as meek, missing the resolute political sensibility that identified Malcolm X as her personal hero.

Arriving in Detroit in 1957, she spent more than half her life fighting racial injustice in the Jim Crow North. Describing the city as the "promised land that wasn't," the Parks family lived in the "heart of the ghetto" and found racism in Detroit "almost as widespread as Montgomery."

Having volunteered on his upstart political campaign, Parks was hired in 1965 by the newly elected Rep. John Conyers, Jr., whom she helped win his congressional seat, to be part of his Detroit staff. There she worked on issues such as police brutality, open housing, welfare and job discrimination -- the plagues of Northern racism.

Her long-standing political commitments to self-defense, black history, economic justice, police accountability and black political empowerment intersected with key aspects of the Black Power movement, and she took part in numerous mobilizations in the late 1960s and 1970s.

An internationalist, she opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam, demonstrated at the South African embassy to condemn apartheid and contested U.S. policy in Central America.

Eight days after 9/11, she joined other activists in a letter calling for justice, not vengeance, insisting the U.S. must work with the international community and warning against retaliation or war.

Outrage, Tenacity and Bravery

To the end of her life, Parks continued to stress the enduring need for social change, reminding Americans "not [to] become comfortable with the gains we have made in the last 40 years." That lifetime of steadfastness and outrage, tenacity and bravery, is what deserves national veneration.

Doing justice to Parks' actual legacy thus requires something of us -- something much harder than a stamp or a statue. Rosa Parks' courage was the ability to make an independent stand, even though she and others had done it before and nothing had changed, and even when she well-understood the harm that might befall her. She made those stands over and over throughout the course of her life.

Honoring her legacy means summoning similar audacity. It requires acknowledging that America is not a post-racial society and that the blight of racial and social injustice is deep and manifest. It entails a profound recommitment to the goals for which she spent a lifetime fighting -- a criminal justice system fair and just to people of color, unfettered voting rights, educational access and equity, real assistance to the poor, an end to U.S. wars of occupation and black history in all parts of school curricula.

Finally, it means heeding her words to Spelman College students: "Don't give up, and don't say the movement is dead."

Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and the author of the new biography, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. See, hear or read the transcript of an extensive interview with the author about Rosa Parks on Democracy Now.



]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.10959 2013-02-04T19:39:37Z 2013-02-04T19:43:46Z

Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 determined to make voting harder. And despite the clear need for modernizing voter registration, conservative election officials are zeroing in on the registration process as a place to achieve their goals, by requiring proof of citizenship and adding unnecessary criteria for who can be registered and when.

At a recent Heritage Foundation panel, some of the biggest opponents of voting rights lined up to decry modernizing voter registration, calling it a “threat.” The moderator, the voter fraud wolf-crier Hans von Spakovsky, said solutions like universal voter registration and Election Day registration invite fraud and allow “non-citizens” to vote. There remains no evidence of ineligible voters throwing an election, or people from another country defrauding an outcome, or for that matter of meaningful incidents of any of the fraud these folks continue to insist exists. Still, at the panel Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach proclaimed “aliens” are stealing our votes and invading our voter rolls.

The practice of restricting voter registration and making Americans prove their citizenship to vote has a long history in America, which sadly bears some review. White, wealthy elites have tried to keep the franchise from people of color, the poor and women since the start of this nation, often using registration as a barrier. It was during the civil rights movement, though, that these forces showed the nation that they were willing to try to beat the living black off people to stop them from registering.

Read more here.

]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.10676 2012-12-10T18:39:55Z 2012-12-10T18:42:33Z

Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has announced that it will hear a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 next year. That’s in addition to Arizona v InterTribal Council of Arizona, which stems from a rule that demands voters demonstrate proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The two cases, which hinge on the court’s interpretation of federal legislation that bars discrimination and its interpretation of what’s known as the Motor Voter Act, could make sweeping changes to the ways voting rights are—or are not—protected. Those stakes aren’t lost on community groups around the nation that hope to continue their voting rights work, even without the spotlight of a presidential election.

Last Friday morning, a coalition of community, faith-based, and civic leaders gathered together at a local North Philly pizza joint that doubles as a breakfast diner. The group has been meeting together since early this year, when it became clear that lawmakers wanted to push through a controversial voter ID measure.

Read more here.
That law was temporarily halted before the general election, but the coalition is preparing to hold a major news conference this week, when it will announce how it’s going to fight to have a permanent injunction set against voter ID. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday to decide the dates for arguments.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.10631 2012-12-03T17:42:51Z 2012-12-03T17:44:49Z

Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
More than one million people voted in Nevada’s general election this year, up 4.5 percent from 2008. The Western state is a perennial battleground, and voters there have always sided with the eventual presidential winner in each of the past nine elections. In 2008, Latinos were credited with helping then-candidate Barack Obama take the presidency, and Latinos knew that registration and get out the vote efforts would also prove crucial this year.

As we reported in October, a Latina organizer who was registering voters outside of a Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles office was so badly intimidated that she dyed her hair blond in order to avoid more problems. It didn’t help. Elvira Díaz says she continued to be harassed, and was physically shoved and spat on by a Republican operative named Alex Bacchus, who also gestured his hands into the shape of a gun, aimed those hands at her, and made gunshot sounds. Read more here.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.10597 2012-11-26T09:40:00Z 2012-12-01T05:06:53Z

Khalil Abdullah ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=69 The failure of state election officials to ensure a level playing field for all voters was amplified on November 6 when Korean Americans at one voting precinct site in Virginia were ordered by poll workers to form a separate line so as not to slow down the process for other voters.

The lines were re-integrated only after vocal protests from other voters who started shouting, “That’s wrong!” said Glenn Magpantay, Democracy Program Director with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).

The incident occurred in Fairfax County, where a group of mostly elderly Korean Americans turned up at a polling station. Poll workers grew frustrated when the seniors – many of who have only limited English proficiency -- struggled to give their names and addresses in English.

“At one point the workers said, ‘All the Koreans move over here,’ and they started processing white voters,’” Magpantay continued, because the poll workers decided, “[voting] would go faster.” Magpantay acknowledged the workers were overwhelmed because of long lines, but said their actions reflected a lack of proper training, adding the site failed to provide adequate language assistance.

Tram Nguyen is Associate Director with Virginia New Majority, which works to engage minority groups in the state in the political process. VNM deployed 186 poll watchers in Northern Virginia, Richmond and the Tidewater area on Election Day, said Nguyen, adding it was a call from one of these that tipped her off to what was happening.

“When the elderly Korean-American voters showed up at that polling location and were unable to communicate, the poll workers were unsure what to do,” said Nguyen, “and, because of the long lines, I think they were feeling a lot of pressure, and so what they ended up doing – incorrectly — was setting [the Korean-Americans] aside.”

Nguyen said under Virginia and federal law, voters are “allowed to bring in anybody they want” to assist with language issues but that many poll workers seemed unaware of that and other rules designed to help voters.

She said the lack of personnel fluent in Asian languages was a key factor for voter confusion, particularly when coupled with long waiting lines like those in Virginia. Last week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors decided to establish a commission to investigate the reasons for the delays and disruptions.

For Magpantay, the incident with the Korean Americans recalled a similar event in Boston in 2004, when Chinese American and Vietnamese American voters were placed into separate lines. Unlike in Virginia, he said, the lines in Boston remained segregated “all day.”

Magpantay, who litigates voting rights cases, flew to Boston after that election to meet with the official in charge of the site. “She said, ‘I’m so sorry, it will never happen again.’ I said, ‘You’re right it will never happen again. We filed a lawsuit against you.’”

Under the Voting Rights Act, language minorities can have ballots printed in a language other than English if they meet certain numerical thresholds calculated on Census data. In Boston, the Chinese-American community at the time was too small to trigger a Chinese language ballot under those provisions.

There are, however, other avenues that can force the issuance of a non-English ballot. “We were able to get there through a remedial action, to say, well, if you’re going to discriminate against minority voters, stop discriminating and translate the ballot,” Magpantay explained.

Though ballots were printed in Spanish in Fairfax County due to the surging Latino population, neither Korean nor Vietnamese Americans in Virginia have reached a critical mass through the Census to require counties to print ballots in their respective languages. Until those communities grow large enough, Ngyuen said more effective outreach and education of voters before Election Day are critical to alleviating bottlenecks at the polls.

She said VNM was among a number of organizations distributing information in Asian languages other than English. The National Korean American Service and Education Consortium targeted Virginia as one of 11 states to receive bilingual voting guides prior to the election, worked through Korean churches to promote voter education and, in collaboration with the AALDEF, also provided Election Day monitoring in Centreville, another community in Fairfax County where Korean Americans account for a fourth of its over 70,000 residents.

Part of the confusion on Election Day in Virginia was also driven by the state’s newly enacted voter non-photo ID law, Nguyen contended. She said the nuances of the new law compounded the challenges for even veteran voters who needed language assistance. She said the state’s election officials made “no concerted effort to educate language minority populations in terms of these new laws,” describing their inaction as bad public policy that affects voters regardless of political persuasion.

Houston is an example of where the success of Asian language outreach has contributed to greater voter participation. Ballots in Vietnamese have been printed in the city’s Harris County since 2002, though it took a court order under the Voting Rights Act to initiate the action. The community also benefits from an independent ethnic media presence.

"The election went fine for the Vietnamese because we had a lot of talk shows and promotion to inform our audience in details about every step of how to vote and get help if they needed,” said Thuy Tranh Vu, co-founder of Radio Saigon Houston.

Vietnamese Americans in other cities were less fortunate. In Philadelphia, home to more than 14,000 Vietnamese Americans, AALDEF reported that before Election Day, “Philadelphia officials said they had only trained four Asian language interpreters for the entire city.”

Similarly, an AALDEF statement noted, “At three poll sites in New Orleans, limited English-proficient Vietnamese American voters, many of whom were senior citizens, were told that interpreters could not assist them or otherwise translate the ballot for them, in violation of Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. AALDEF attempted to appeal to local elections officials, yet the hotline number to report problems only led to a voicemail box.”

Along with Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the organization cited incidents in Georgia, Michigan, and New York as particularly egregious, though for different reasons.

Editor's notes: AALDEF joined the U.S. Department of Justice in the lawsuit against the City of Boston. VA's  voting law was changed to require ID, but enlarged the pool of acceptable types of  identification, including a state-issued photo ID.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.10569 2012-11-21T17:51:28Z 2012-11-21T17:54:08Z

Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
As The New York Times reported three days after the election, “several races remained a mystery” in Arizona for far too long. Although some candidates conceded defeat, their activist supporters didn’t always give up on the idea that a full ballot count could turn towards their candidate’s favor. The Senate race between Democrat Richard Carmona and Republican Jeff Flake and the race for Maricopa County Sheriff between Republican Joe Arpaio and Democrat Paul Penzone hung in the balance. The Republican candidates took both of these hard-fought races once counting for them was finally complete, confirming the result that was projected two weeks ago when polls officially closed.

That Latinos would have concerns about the process is to be expected. More than a month ago, the Maricopa County Elections Department misled some voters by printing the wrong election date on cards and book markers issued to Spanish-speaking voters. Just one week later, voters received a letter stating their signatures needed verification. When I called the number these voters were given, there was initially no answer or voicemail setup. Eventually, someone did pick up, but no one on the line spoke Spanish and I was told to call back “mañana”. Read more here.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.10528 2012-11-14T20:46:14Z 2012-11-14T20:49:30Z

Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
But Victory declared he had seniority, arguing Johnson’s first few years on the bench didn’t count because it was a special appointment made by a federal consent decree. Indeed, Johnson’s Supreme Court seat was made available because the electoral districts at the time were drawn so that no black Louisianians would ever have the kind of plurality needed to elect a candidate who represented their interests. When you’re black and live in a Southern state that venerates its Confederate heritage while leading the world in locking people up, voting for a judge kinda matters to you.

The consent decree carved out a special district where African Americans could elect a judge of their choice, which turned out to be Johnson who was granted all of the powers of a state Supreme Court justice, despite the unique appointment. Civil rights lawyers, including current Urban League president Marc Morial, pushed for that decree by way of the Voting Rights Act, which is violated when “it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election … are not equally open to participation by members of a protected class … in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”


 Read more here.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.10516 2012-11-13T09:00:00Z 2012-11-13T03:01:48Z

Khalil Abdullah ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=69 If no one else is rejoicing about the systemic inconveniences imposed on Florida voters on Election Day, where waits as long as eight hours to cast a ballot were endured and witnessed by thousands of voters, the state’s former senators Mike Bennett and Ellyn Bogdanoff should be elated.

“I want people in Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who walks 200 miles across the desert,” Bennett said in 2011 when sponsoring legislation to impose stricter voting requirements. His colleague concurred with his view that voting should be made more difficult. “Democracy should not be a convenience,” Bogdanoff said.

With the cut back of early voting in Florida, the result of lengthy lines was predictable. Lee Rowland, counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice, noted that each state that succeeded in limiting early voting, particularly Florida and Ohio, led in the number of waiting hours for the public to vote, according to preliminary reports.

Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, director of the Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program, said that had her mother been voting in Florida, she would have been unable to endure the wait as she uses a walker.

But when Culliton-Gonzalez described the voting experience in Florida on November 6 as “bad all day,” she wasn’t only referring to long lines. Misinformation about polling places, denial of language assistance to voters with limited English proficiency and repeated efforts at intimidation at some precincts by self-appointed poll watchers, contributed to a debacle now enshrined as an expected rite of passage for Floridians during presidential elections.

Yet, it wasn’t only the voters’ endurance that prevailed on Election Day. There were also selfless acts by individuals committed to the concept of ballot access.

Culliton-Gonzalez, who traveled to Florida as part of the Election Protection Network Coalition, a non-partisan initiative that dispatches attorneys and monitors versed in election law to monitor procedures and assist voters, said she was inspired by Roosevelt Lanier.

Lanier, an African-American, now retired, voted in the morning at the high school that served as the precinct site. He then went to get some exercise at a different school’s facilities. While there, he quickly realized that those arriving to vote had been misinformed about the site which had been moved to the school he had just left 12 blocks away.

“The polling place had been changed,” said Culliton-Gonzalez. “I called the county [Miami-Dade] three times to tell them, but the election officials said, ‘Well, they should have got a letter and they should have read it.’” Some of the arrivals, particularly the newly registered voters, did indeed have letters that clearly directed them to the facility not in use.

Culliton-Gonzalez said the mix-up was probably just the result of a clerical error, but over the course of the hour that she was there with Lanier, at least 20 cars pulled up, “all African Americans, maybe one Latino.” Culliton-Gonalez and her partner from the coalition went to a nearby CVS and purchased posterboard and markers to make the signs to redirect the voters.

“Mr. Lanier said he wanted to stay there and help the rest of the people and that he could stay until 1:00 pm,” she said. She left him to visit other sites but stopped back to check on him later and to bring him lunch.

“He called me at 7:00 p.m. to say, ‘Okay, the cars have stopped coming.’” Culliton-Gonzalez said through his spontaneous volunteerism, she estimated Lanier had steered 200 voters to the correct location who otherwise may not have known where to cast a ballot.

And while lack of signage at one precinct location in Florida was the problem, in certain polling sites in Pennsylvania, the signs themselves were at issue.

In the months ahead of the election, the state’s residents had awaited the outcome of a series of legal challenges to its enacted photo voter ID law. With the state’s inability to guarantee that it could produce the number of new IDs necessary in time for the election, a Pennsylvania judge, under pressure from the state’s Supreme Court, conceded the law could have a discriminatory impact.

While his injunction meant Pennsylvanians were legally able to vote without a state-issued photo voter ID, in some precincts, signs stating it was required were still posted on Election Day.

That was the case in Milmont Park, south of Philadelphia and close to the Delaware line, where the roiling turmoil over voter photo ID proceeded at lower decibels than in Pennsylvania’s most populous city, but confusion over the law reigned nevertheless.

Jacqueline Jrolf said she and her husband got to their voting precinct before the polls officially opened so they could vote and get on with their day. She said they each brought their voter photo ID but decided on principle, “we’re not going to show it.”

But when she arrived at the precinct, Jrolf said she saw a sign stating voters had to show ID. While the injunction did not require a voter to have the state-issued voter photo ID, it did not prohibit poll workers from asking prospective voters to show it.

Still, Jrolf said she was positive the language on the wall sign was dated and approached one of the poll workers with her complaint. That worker promptly got a supervisor.

“‘Oh, that must have been printed before the law was overturned’,” Jrolf recalled being told. “‘Okay, can you cross out what it says?’” Jrolf said she was “kind of surprised, but happy,” adding that she and the supervisor went through the text making corrections. “I felt satisfied, at least something was done.” Her contentment was short-lived.

On the way home, Jrolf said she stopped at another precinct to see whether the same sign was displayed, which turned out to be the case. When she brought it up with workers there, the reception she received was less than cordial. She eventually left the precinct, with the sign still in place.

“It felt like voter suppression to me,” she said.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.10515 2012-11-13T01:30:26Z 2012-11-13T02:09:34Z

Valeria Fernandez ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 PHOENIX – After moving to the Phoenix area, the Bustamante family made sure to reregister under their new Maricopa County address. Mom registered as a libertarian, dad as a democrat and the couple’s 18-year-old son as an independent.

Come Election Day, the family found their experiences at the polling booth were as divergent as their political leanings.

“I heard some stuff on the news that said maybe us Latinos didn’t understand the ballots or maybe we didn’t understand how to vote,” said Daniel Bustamante, 41. “I’ve been voting since I turned 18, so I definitely understand what it takes to vote,” he added.

Bustamante arrived at his local polling station last Tuesday with an early ballot, his ID and a voter registration card, all of which should have allowed him to cast his vote then and there. Instead, he was asked to submit a provisional ballot.

His wife, Maria, did not bring her early ballot, but was nevertheless allowed to cast a regular ballot, while their son never received his ballot in the mail and so, like his father, was forced to vote provisionally.

“I believe there was something done to maybe regulate the outcome,” said Bustamante.

Such suspicions are part of what is fueling a growing chorus of Latino voters calling for a federal investigation into irregularities ranging from failure to receive early ballots to numerous cases of eligible voters, like the Bustamantes, who were forced to vote provisionally.

They are also casting a shadow over results in local elections, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio eked out a narrow victory in a bitter recall effort spearheaded by Latino advocacy groups. Arpaio first gained attention for what many called a racially biased policy targeting Hispanics in his effort to crack down on illegal immigration.

To date over 250,000 provisional and early ballots remain uncounted in the county. Arpaio beat out his Democratic challenger, Paul Penzone, by just 80,000 votes.

For his part, Bustamante said he can’t be sure whether his own vote and that of his son’s has been counted yet. Neither supported Arpaio.

Voter mobilization groups and civil rights activists behind the recall campaign say they have been receiving similar complaints from Latino voters across the county. Together the groups registered over 34,000 new Latino voters in Maricopa.

A report by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) projects Latino voter turnout in the state could hit record numbers, possibly reaching 359,000, up from about 291,000 in 2008. A final tally won’t be possible until all votes are counted.

Daria Ovide, spokesman for the Campaign for Arizona’s Future, which advocates on behalf of the state’s hotel workers, said her group has already reached out to the Voting Rights Division in the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Joined by Citizens for a Better Arizona (CBA) and Promise Arizona, volunteers from the campaign are staging a 24-hour-vigil in protest outside the Maricopa County Recorders Office. “Adios Arpaio,” the name of the recall campaign, is emblazoned across their tee shirts.

Ovide said there is growing concern over the number of reports coming from voters who say they experienced problems at the polls. Over the weekend, her campaign made about 4,000 phone calls, reaching anywhere between 500 to 600 Latino voters to survey their experience. By Wednesday, they expect to make 20,000 phone calls.

Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, meanwhile, has said that all votes will be counted. Her office has provided a series of daily updates on the count. As of Sunday, there were 140,000 early ballots and 122,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted -- the later figure has grown from the original count on election night.

“We know they’re counting the ballots,” said Ovide. “We don’t know yet whether the issue is disproportionately affecting Latinos.”

Ovide said hers and other groups want an investigation to figure out how it was that so many were made to vote provisionally or never received their early ballots, to determine whether election reform is needed.

It’s an issue that Democratic House Minority Leader Chad Campbell has already taken up. He is among a small coterie of lawmakers calling on the creation of a bi-partisan committee to investigate allegations of voting irregularities.

“In light of the hundreds of thousands of ballots that have yet to be counted, the apparent increase in the number of provisional ballots this election year, and the statewide irregularities that have been reported by voters, I am calling on Arizona’s leaders to conduct a bipartisan investigation of the 2012 general election,” said Campbell in a written statement. “We must determine the cause of the problems and identify ways to correct them before the next election.”

On election night, activists sounded the alarm that there were still close to half a million ballots that had not been counted and that could potentially change the outcome of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s race, as well as the Senate race between Democrat Richard Carmona and Republican Jeff Flake.

Penzone conceded on election night, giving the 80-year-old Arpaio a sixth term as sheriff.

The following day the Maricopa County Recorders Office and the Secretary of
State acknowledged there were still 600,000 ballots to be counted statewide, two thirds of them from Maricopa County. The numbers exceeded expectations from election authorities based on previous elections.

Still, Ovide said she doesn’t expect the results in the sheriff’s election to change. As for Monday mid-afternoon, Arpaio had 52 percent of the vote, followed by Penzone with 44 percent and the Independent candidate Michael Stauffer with 4 percent.

“Looks like sheriff Joe won again,” said Ovide, who added, “He obviously knows that he didn’t win by much.”
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