“In The Bull’s Eye”: Trayvon Martin And Dangerous Times For Black Men
For every black man in America, from the millionaire in the corner office to the mechanic in the local garage, the Trayvon Martin tragedyis personal. It could have been me or one of my sons. It could have been any of us.
How many George Zimmermans are out there cruising the streets? How many guys with chips on their shoulders and itchy fingers on the triggers of loaded handguns? How many self-imagined guardians of the peace who say the words “black male” with a sneer?
We don’t yet know every detail of the encounter between Martin and Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., that ended with an unarmed 17-year-old high school student being shot dead. But we know enough to conclude that this is an old, familiar story.
We know from tapes of Zimmerman’s 911 call that he initiated the encounter, having decided that Martin’s presence in the neighborhood was suspicious. We know that when Zimmerman told the 911 operator that he was following Martin, the operator responded, “Okay, we don’t need you to do that.” We know that Zimmerman kept following Martin anyway.
“This guy looks like he is up to no good,” Zimmerman said on the 911 tape.
Please tell me, what would be the innocent way to walk down the street with an iced tea and some Skittles? Hint: For black men, that’s a trick question.
Some commentators have sought to liken Martin’s killing to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, an unspeakable crime that helped galvanize the civil rights movement. To make a facile comparison is a disservice to history — and to the memory of both young men. It is ridiculous to imply that nothing has changed.
When Till was killed in Mississippi at 14 — accused of flirting with a white woman — this was a different country. State-sanctioned terrorism and assassination were official policy throughout the South. Today, the laws and institutions that enforced Jim Crow repression have long since been dismantled. Mississippi, of all places, has more black elected officials than any other state. An African American family lives in the White House.
Black America was never a monolith, but over the past five decades it has become much more diverse — economically, socially, culturally. If you stood on a street corner and chose five black men at random, you might meet a doctor who lives in the high-priced suburbs, an immigrant from Ethiopia who drives a cab, a young aspiring filmmaker with flowing dreadlocks, an unemployed dropout trying to hustle his next meal and a midlevel government worker struggling to put his kids through college.
Those men would have nothing in common, really, except one thing: For each of them, walking down the wrong street at the wrong time could be a fatal mistake.
I hear from people who contend that racism no longer exists in this country. I tell them I wish they were right.
Does it matter that Zimmerman is himself a member of a minority group — he is Hispanic — or that his family says he has black friends? Not in the least. The issue isn’t Zimmerman’s race or ethnicity; it’s the hair-trigger assumption he made that “black male” equals “up to no good.”
This is one thing that hasn’t changed in all the eventful years since Emmett Till’s mutilated body was laid to rest. It is instructive to note that Till grew up in Chicago and just happened to be in Mississippi visiting relatives. Young black men who were born and raised in the South knew where the red lines were drawn, understood the unwritten code of behavior that made the difference between survival and mortal danger. Till didn’t.
Today, young black men grow up in a society where racism is no longer deemed acceptable. Many live in integrated neighborhoods, attend integrated schools, have interracial relationships. They wonder why their parents prattle on so tediously about race, warning about this or that or the other, when their own youthful experience tells them that race doesn’t matter.
What could happen on the way home from the store with some Skittles and an iced tea?
Whether Zimmerman can or should be prosecuted, given Florida’s “stand your ground” law providing broad latitude to claim self-defense, is an important question. But the tragic and essential thing, for me, is the bull’s-eye that black men wear throughout their lives — and the vital imperative to never, ever, be caught on the wrong street at the wrong time.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 22, 2012
“No Passive Resistence”: GOP’s War On Free Speech Intensifies
Dems have been faulted by conservative journalists for excessive political hyperbole in using the term “war on” in connection with GOP campaigns against unions, young voters, people of color, undocumented workers and women. Call it what you will, there shouldn’t be much doubt that Republicans are dedicated to undermining the political and citizenship rights of these groups.
Not content to wage a war on voting against pro-Democratic groups, it now appears that Republicans have declared a war on free speech as well. We had a staff post yesterday on the draconian anti-picketing bill now making it’s way through the Republican-controlled legislature in Georgia. Today DemocraticDiva Donna Gatehouse has an equally-disturbing blog, “AZ Legislature Attacks Civil Liberties” up at AFL-CIO Now. As Gatehouse explains:
…Women’s and reproductive rights groups will undoubtedly be at the state capitol to speak out against numerous shocking and intrusive anti-abortion and anti-contraception measures before the legislature this session. The GOP majority is apparently so frightened by this prospect it’s trying to make it a Class 1 misdemeanor to engage in “passive resistance.” Common nonviolent protest tactics such as going limp when the police try to remove you from an area or chaining yourself to something could get you up to a six-month month jail sentence.The deadline to introduce new bills has passed but Arizona has a maneuver, called a “striker,” that permits legislators to introduce bills beyond it. They strike out all the language in a previous bill and replace it with a new, and often totally unrelated, bill. It’s supposed to be reserved for real emergencies but it’s used for all kinds of bills, and usually to railroad them through the process with little time for public comment or debate. In this case, the “emergency” is lawmakers facing the unbearable thought of citizens calling attention to their outrageous and undemocratic agenda in the public square.
Phoenix blogger Steve Muratore reports that the “no passive resistance” bill is the idea of Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Scottsdale), who has a long background in law enforcement.
…Apparently, he testified that law enforcement officers are at risk of harm from Occupy protesters who passively resist…What harm? A hernia? Not if they lift with their knees as they’re supposed to.
Given the chance, today’s GOP would make criminals out of American heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis, who tapped the power of nonviolent protest to strengthen America’s rights of free expression, freedom of assembly and free speech. During Dr. King’s lifetime, there were some Republican leaders of patriotic integrity who stepped up and took a stand in support of the first Amendment rights of protest and free speech. It appears that none who can meet that standard remain in today’s GOP.
By: J. P. Green, The Democratic Strategist, March 21, 2012
“Discriminatory Election Laws”: The GOP Assault On The Voting Rights Act
Last week the Department of Justice denied preclearance to Texas’s law requiring voters to present photo identification under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires states and jurisdictions with a demonstrated history of passing discriminatory election laws to get approval from the DOJ for any change to laws governing the time, place or manner in which an election is conducted.
Within days Texas filed a challenge in federal court arguing that Section 5 is unconstitutional. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott maintains that the federal government exceeded its authority and violated the Tenth Amendment when it passed the measure.
Conservative opponents of civil rights are eager to see that challenge succeed. Writing in National Review—which opposed the civil rights movement—vice chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights and conservative scholar Abigail Thernstrom argues that Section 5 is outdated. National Review’s evolution on the subject is the standard conservative slither on civil rights. First you oppose it. Then, when society has evolved and you look like a bigot, you accept it. Then, as soon as humanly possible, you argue it was necessary at the time but no longer is.
“The Voting Rights Act was absolutely essential in ending the brutal regime of racial subjugation in the South, but it has become a period piece—anti-discrimination legislation passed at a time when southern blacks were kept from the polls by violence, intimidation, and fraudulent literacy tests,” writes Thernstrom. “Those disfranchising devices are as unlikely to return as segregated water fountains.” Thernstrom focuses most of her argument on the question of redistricting, and she argues that increasing residential integration and ethnic and socioeconomic diversity within minority communities makes the creation of majority-minority districts either unnecessary or impossible. “The notion of a ‘black community’ as the foundation of a black legislative district is also becoming an anachronism.”
There are two separate arguments being advanced by civil rights opponents: that Section 5 is unconstitutional because it falls outside the federal government’s enumerated powers, and that it is bad policy. Both are bogus. Section 5 is clearly constitutional, and we very much need it to protect the right to vote.
When Texas votes for seats in the House and Senate or the presidency, the results affect every American. Thus it is in the national interest to insure that elections are conducted fairly. “Not having discrimination in the electoral process is important to all of us,” says Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau.
Congress has the authority to regulate national elections, and it has the power under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution to protect the rights of African-Americans from state governments. “Congress has broad authority to regulate procedures for federal elections under Article I, Section IV of the Constitution,” notes Daniel Tokaji, an election law expert at Ohio State University. “Because Texas ID requirement would apply to federal elections, we don’t even need to get into the question of whether Section 5 falls within Congress’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment power.” While Tokaji agrees that imposing federal power over redistricting may raise some constitutional questions, the Texas complaint maintains that the federal government has no business telling states not to disenfranchise their citizens.
Moreover, contra Thernstrom, southern blacks are indeed being kept from the polls today. Case in point: the Texas voter ID law itself. Blacks and Latinos in Texas are disproportionately likely not to have driver’s licenses other forms of state-issued photo identification, as are poor people and the disabled. As the DOJ noted in making its decision, “According to [Texas’s] own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification.” Texas did not collect data for African-Americans. But national studies have shown they too are less likely than whites to have the requisite ID. The DOJ has also recently denied preclearance to a similar law in South Carolina for the same reason. (South Carolina is also suing the DOJ, but they are not claiming that the law is unconstitutional, only that it is being incorrectly applied.)
This is not an isolated incident. Every time the VRA is renewed, Congress documents that it is still needed by examining allegations of vote suppression. “[Section 5] has stopped laws from going into effect that would restrict minority participation,” says Nancy Abudu, senior staff counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. The most recent renewal was in 2006, when Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress and the White House, so it can hardly be characterized as a Democratic power grab. “[In 2006] Congress did a very good job of collecting the evidence of why Section 5 remains necessary,” says Abudu.
“The only places covered by Section 5 have a history of discrimination,” explains Shelton. “Every state under Section 5 was reviewed carefully for its record and complaints. [Opponents] are right: it is an extraordinary measure to take that is inconsistent with states’ rights. But these are states that have proven bad behavior. The law is protecting the participation of all eligible Americans.”
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, March 21, 2012
“The Fundamental Right To Vote”: Second Judge Strikes Down Wisconsin’s ALEC-Inspired Voter ID Law
A Dane County judge has declared Wisconsin’s American Legislative Exchange Council-inspired voter ID law unconstitutional, making him the second judge in one week to block the law’s unnecessary burdens on the right to vote.
“The people’s fundamental right of suffrage preceded and gave birth to our Constitution,” wrote Dane County District Judge Richard Niess, “not the other way around.”
The judge rebuffed assertions by Governor Scott Walker and legislative Republicans that they possessed the authority to impose new burdens on voting. “[D]efendants’ argument that the fundamental right to vote must yield to legislative fiat turns our constitutional scheme of democratic government squarely on its head,” he wrote.
“A government that undermines the very foundation of its existence – the people’s inherent, pre-constitutional right to vote – imperils its legitimacy as a government by the people, for the people, and especially of the people. It sows the seeds for its own demise as a democratic institution.”
The case was brought by the League of Women Voters and tried by the law firm Cullen, Weston, Pines & Bach.
Judge Niess’ decision comes less than a week after a Wisconsin State Court judge temporarily enjoined the same voter ID law — Act 23 — on grounds it likely violated the state constitution, but only until that court could hear a full trial. Niess’ decision, also decided under the Wisconsin Constitution, permanently invalidates the law. Governor Walker’s Department of Justice says they will quickly appeal the decision.
Voting Protected by Wisconsin Constitution
Article III, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution provides that all state residents who are U.S. citizens and over age 18 may vote, and Section 2, according to the decision, “authorizes the government to exclude from voting those otherwise-eligible electors (1) who have been convicted of a felony and whose civil rights have not been restored, or (2) those adjudged by a court to be incompetent or partially incompetent, unless the judgment contains certain specifications.”
According to Judge Niess, Section 1 and 2 provide the exclusive basis for creating laws that implement the constitutional requirements for voting. “The government may not disqualify an elector who possesses those qualifications on the grounds that the voter does not satisfy additional statutorily created qualifications not contained in Article III, such as a photo ID,” he wrote.
“By enacting Act 23’s photo ID requirements as a precondition to voting, the legislature and governor have exceeded their constitutional authority.”
Wisconsin passed Act 23 in May on a contentious, party-line vote. Four lawsuits challenging the law have since been filed. Wisconsin Republicans assert that the law should be upheld because the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2008 that Indiana’s relatively similar voter ID law did not violate the U.S. Constitution. However, two of the four lawsuits are challenging Act 23 under the Wisconsin Constitution, which unlike the U.S. Constitution expressly protects the right to vote. Wisconsin’s voter ID law is also more strict than Indiana’s, and evidence indicates it will place more burdens on a greater number of people.
Voter ID’s ALEC Roots
Wisconsin’s voter ID law bears many elements of the ALEC model Voter ID Act. ALEC began to focus on voter ID shortly after the highest general election turnout in nearly 60 years swept America’s first black president into office with strong support from college students and African-Americans. Soon after the 2008 elections, “Preventing Election Fraud” was the cover story on the Inside ALEC magazine, and ALEC corporations and politicians voted in 2009 for “model” voter ID legislation.
Around 34 voter ID bills modeled after the ALEC template were introduced in 2011. Those bills have been coming under increasing scrutiny in recent months.
Judge Niess’ decision came on the same day that the U.S. Department of Justice blocked Texas’ ALEC-inspired voter ID law on grounds it would suppress the Latino vote. Last December, the D.O.J. blocked South Carolina’s voter ID bill as discriminatory against people of color. Texas and South Carolina are two of several states with a history of discrimination requiring federal pre-clearance for changes to voting laws or procedures under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Wisconsin is not subject to pre-clearance.
“The right to vote belongs to all Wisconsin citizens”
While last week’s state court decision by Judge David Flanagan focused on how the voter ID law “is addressed to a problem which is very limited” and “fails to account for the difficulty its demands impose upon indigent, elderly and disabled citizens,” Judge Niess issued his decision based solely on the legislature’s constitutional authority to regulate voting. “It is not necessary to consider the human cost of photo ID requirements in order to expose their constitutional deficiencies,” he wrote. “They are unconstitutional on their face.
But, Judge Niess wrote, “there is no harm in pausing to reflect on the insurmountable burdens facing many of our fellow constitutionally qualified electors should Act 23 hold sway.”
“Mostly they would consist of those struggling souls who, unlike the vast majority of Wisconsin voters, for whatever reason will lack the financial, physical, mental, or emotional resources to comply with Act 23, but are otherwise constitutionally entitled to vote.”
While noting that “where it exists, voter fraud corrupts elections and undermines our form of government,” Niess stated that “voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression. Indeed, they are two heads on the same monster.”
Niess wrote:
“Where does the Wisconsin Constitution say that the government we, the people, created can simply cast aside the inherent suffrage rights of any qualified elector on the wish and promise – even the guarantee – that doing so serves to prevent some unqualified individuals from voting?
It doesn’t. In fact, it unequivocally says the opposite. The right to vote belongs to all Wisconsin citizens who are qualified electors, not just the fortunate majority for whom Act 23 poses little obstacle at the polls.”
By: Brendan Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy, March 13, 2012
“A Foiled Power Grab”: Voter ID Laws Face Major Roadblocks
Texas Republicans have been trying for years to pass a law that would require state voters to show identification before hitting the polls—and state Democrats have been equally determined to stop such a measure. The Rs came close in 2009, but the House Democrats, only two seats away from a majority, blew up the legislative session rather than see the measure pass. By 2011, however, fresh from Tea Party victories, the GOP had overwhelming majorities in both Houses. The bill was almost undoubtedly going to pass, and rather than go for a more moderate version of voter ID with non-photo options, the conservatives went for the gold, introducing one of the most stringent versions of a voter ID requirement. The only option left for the Democrats was to set up the grounds for the legal battles sure to come.
Monday, it looks like those efforts paid off. The Department of Justice has blocked the law, meaning that while the measure goes to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the Lone Star State won’t be allowed to enforce the measure. Not every state must seek permission before changing election law, a process known as preclearance. The entire reason Texas must preclear changes to its election law stems from the state’s history of civil rights abuses. 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed, it seems the feds are right to keep their guard up.
Of the many problems the DOJ outlines in its letter to the state, one major point came up repeatedly during the legislative debate on the subject: the plight of rural voters. Democratic senators hit hard on the problem of access to state drivers’ license offices; in the letter, the DOJ notes 81 of the state’s 254 counties lack operational drivers’ license offices. The DOJ also notes that in rural areas the gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanics who have the necessary ID is “particularly stark in counties without driver’s license offices.” The senators were also vehement in discussing the hardships low-income voters would face both in terms of logistics and in terms of monetary costs. The DOJ finds that someone lacking the necessary documents to get an ID would have to start by obtaining a birth certificate—at minimum $22.
The question, not surprisingly, stems from whether Hispanic voters will be disproportionately affected by the new hurdles. The DOJ is fairly damning here, looking separately at two data sets provided by the state, one from September 2011 and one from January 2012. The state failed to explain discrepancies between the two sets of data, but more importantly, the two sets both show similar trends. Latino residents are significantly less likely to have the identification necessary for voting. Furthermore, the letter notes that the state has done almost nothing to educate voters about the coming change: “The state has indicated that it will implement a new educational program;” the letter reads, “but as of this date, our information indicates that the currently proposed plan will incorporate the new identification requirement into a general voter-education program.”
The state attorney general has already filed a preemptive lawsuit, so the next step is the D.C. Courts. But in the meantime, the law can’t go into effect—a legal win for the minority rights groups and Democrats fighting against the state. It’s not the only victory. As the DOJ issued its letter, a second judge in Wisconsin has blocked the state’s measure to require idenfication. Back in December, the Obama administration nixed a similar proposal from South Carolina.
To me, the partisan quality of the debate stains almost everything. Last week, I wrote about Connecticut’s efforts to increase voter turnout—a rare example in the midst of efforts to make voter more difficult. I’ll say now what I said then. These measures have obvious partisan consequences—and voter ID would help Republicans and hurt Democrats in political races. It’s obvious that concern for power is motivating many of the actors in the debate.
But voting is a holy act in democratic governments. It’s a powerful right, one people have struggled and died to exercise, and only relatively recently have minority communities had the necessary legal protections to get to the ballot box. The fact that the DOJ’s decision may benefit one political party is hardly worth mentioning when one considers that it also benefits basic rights of citizens.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, March 12, 2012
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