In a devastating blow to what John Lewis called “the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in democracy,” the illegitimate right-wing SCOTUS party has finally repealed the Voting Rights Act they have long been gutting, ensuring that communities of color are increasingly deprived of a “voice in their own destiny.” By throwing out Louisiana’s new voting map as a false “racial gerrymander,” Fannie Lou Hamer said, the court extremists betrayed generations who fought and bled, “to live as decent human beings.”
The court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Calais “Our country’s most important federal civil rights law,” effectively invalidating the last remaining provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 2 This allowed voters of color to legally challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps. Specifically, they rejected Louisiana’s redrawn 2024 congressional map that created a majority-Black second district — in a state that is one-third Black — intended to correct racist GOP policies. mistakes of the past, defying precedent, context and common sense to argue that the move, which had already been upheld by two courts, was “unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.”
In another bizarre opinion, Samuel Alito, the most notorious of the gang of hacks, did not directly strike down Section 2, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race; Writing to MajorityHe argued that he was simply reinterpreting it “correctly” as required guide of intentional discrimination – which Congress did not do He writes In the law, which challenges previous rulings that only redistricting must a result In discrimination, whether intentional or not, which is almost impossible to prove. Thus, using “sleight of hand and legal jargon,” Alito gave corrupt politicians license to continue gaming the system by silencing entire communities of color.
The potential death of a vital law that has curbed racial gerrymandering and discrimination for 60 years comes, of course, years after whitening Far from the Roberts Court’s zealots, using tactics from voter ID laws to limit registration. “This ruling is not about the law, it is about power, and giving Republicans more seats that they (can) win at the ballot box,” one advocate said. One result is “malicious” He writes Rick Hasen: “Whitewashing the halls” of Congress, state legislatures, and city councils is the life’s work of judges who view their constituents as aggrieved white men hostile to minority rights — a position that puts them “at odds with democracy itself.”
In my fire opposition, Justice Elena Kagan accused the majority of “blatantly saying that the Voting Rights Act must be reduced to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders.” The law they are “removing” is — or, more accurately, is now — one of the most significant, effective, and justifiable exercises of federal legislative power in our nation’s history, she wrote. Born from the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers, this law was repeatedly and overwhelmingly reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed – not the members of this court.
Above all, critics decry the arrogance and perfidy of these reckless members of the court who happily strip millions of Americans of the basic rights for which so many of their descendants fought, suffered and died. Rev. William Barber Disemboweled Court, ignorant of the painful date “Rights That Cost Our People Too Much,” which “decided that its mission was to enable extremism and systemic racism by arguing that race has no place in the American democratic process. Race has always had a place in that process. To claim that partisan decisions are not racist is a form of racism.” “Some of us,” as John Lewis humbly remarked of his troubled life, “have shed a little blood for (this) right.”
John Lewis described the struggle for voting rights as “the struggle of a lifetime, or perhaps even many lifetimes.”Image from Getty archives
So did Fannie Lou Hamer, who fought against the Jim Crow South in which she grew up: “She was sick and tired of being sick and tired.” The granddaughter of slaves and the youngest of 20 children of sharecroppers, she was 45 in 1962 when she went to an SNCC meeting at a church in Sunflower County, Mississippi, and learned that blacks could register to vote. The next day, she took the bus with 17 others to the county seat in Indianola. The police allowed her and only one other person to take a literacy test; She failed, but continued to retreat until she died: “If I had any sense, I would have been afraid. But the only thing they (the whites) could do was kill me, and they seem to have been trying to do that a little at a time since I can remember.”
On the way back, police stopped them and took them back to Indianola, where the bus driver was fined for “driving the wrong color bus.” Back at the farm, her children said the owner was angry because she had gone to vote; He asked her to leave that night “because we’re not ready for that in Mississippi.” “I didn’t try to record you,” she said He said.. “I tried to record myself.” Then she left: “They released me. This is the best thing that could happen. Now I can work for my people.” She did that for the rest of her life. She joined a voter registration drive, helped organize Freedom Summer, became SNCC’s longest-serving field secretary, and ran for Congress.
Left with a limp after surviving childhood polio, she embraced her identity as a poor, working black woman with a disability and little formal education, upending the preconceived notions of both black colleagues and white enemies. When Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. once objected to her expertise, she responded, “How many bales of cotton have you picked?” In 1963, she became further disabled after she was arrested with other activists in Winona MS, taken to prison and brutalized. To be beaten At the hands of police officers, and at their command, other black prisoners, resulting in permanent damage to her eyes, legs and kidneys. She was still in prison when Medger Evers was murdered.
In August 1964, she recounted the ordeal at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, days after the funerals of the Freedom Riders who killed Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. In her testimony before the Credentials Committee, she challenged the seating of Mississippi’s all-white delegation – starting with the still all-white primary – Demanding The party seat for black members of the Integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which she helped found. In the end, the MFD delegates were not seated, as party leaders offered a two-seat compromise, which she rejected, but confronted them on the national stage about the discrimination they faced, famously asking: “Is this America?”
– YouTube www.youtube.com
During Hammer’s testimony, then-President Lyndon Johnson hastily called a news conference to divert the attention of white Democratic voters who were alarmed by her insistence on true equality. The cameras cut back to Hammer, but the networks later showed her speech. “Hammer has pulled back the curtain,” one account read. “The United States cannot claim to be a democracy while withholding voting rights from millions of its citizens.” Ultimately, Hammer’s sweeping political vision, combined with a wave of civil rights activism, led to Johnson’s eventual government. the signature The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ensuring that the government cannot “deny or abridge the right of any citizen to vote because of race or color.”
Hammer stayed active During the sixties and seventies. I spoke with Malcolm In 1971, she helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus, which aims to recruit, train, and support women to run for office. The titles of her speeches reflected her determination, her anger, and her fierce hopes: “We’re On Our Way,” “No One’s Free Until Everyone’s Free,” “The Only Thing We Can Do is Work Together,” “What We Should Be Applauded,” “America is a Sick Place,” “Make Democracy Real,” and, in 1976, “We’re Not There Yet.”
Obviously, unfortunately, we’re pretty sure we haven’t done that yet. Unlike many others, Hammer lived to do her work and tell her story for a while. she He died In Mississippi on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59, she developed breast cancer and aggravated high blood pressure, diabetes, and complications from a prison beating. she He died, And also “of being poor, black, and an activist in Mississippi at a time when it was all deadly.” Andrew Young delivered her eulogy, telling mourners: “The seeds of social change in America were sown here by the sweat and blood of you and Fannie Lou Hamer.” Then they sang her favorite song: “This Little Light of Mine.” Her headstone says: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” May we honor her works, and may she rest in the peace and strength she deserves.
“The wrongs and disease in this country have been swept under the rug. But I’ve pulled it out from under the rug, and I’ll tell it like it is.” – Fannie Lou Hamer
“To Judges who took what others did Bleeding for: History will have its say. But so will the bridge. And also the blood on the sidewalk. The same goes for people who were told to wait, then beaten for praying, then buried because they believed the Constitution meant what it said.….You will wear this shame for the rest of your life.-Derek Benwell
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