Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #restorethevra
Most recents (3)
Movement thoughts on the 53rd anniversary of the #VotingRightsAct:
The popular imagination "schoolbook" version of the Civil Rights Movement is that MLK appeared in Montgomery & led a bus boycott, which started a protest cycle that culminated in "I Have A Dream" & the VRA. /1
The popular imagination "schoolbook" version of the Civil Rights Movement is that MLK appeared in Montgomery & led a bus boycott, which started a protest cycle that culminated in "I Have A Dream" & the VRA. /1
The Golden Age narrative obfuscates organizing work of everyday people through the brutal Jim Crow south & the falsely "colorblind" North of the 1920s-50s. There were countless efforts to organize black political power from the farmhands of the west coast to the NYC boroughs. /2
This classical framing of the "golden age of the civil rights movement" ignores a lot of what led to the passage of the VRA: 1st, decades of work done by communists that laid down the roots of the movement in the deep south of the 1930s. /3
53 years ago today President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, the country's most important civil rights law. 2016 was the first presidential election in 50 years without the law’s full protections. #RestoreTheVRA
Because the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, 17 states with 189 electoral votes had new voting restrictions in 2016. h/t @BrennanCenter
When we talk about voter suppression, we’re no longer talking about the nostalgic disenfranchisement of 1965. We’re talking about a gutted Voting Rights Act that allows states with the worst histories of discrimination to again block access to the ballot. #RestoreTheVRA #VRA53
Looks like bad news in the fight against GOP racial gerrymandering in Texas, another case that has been stonewalled all decade by conservative judges
Texas is one of the most racially gerrymandered congressional maps in the country. Republicans should have drawn 3 more districts to elect Latino voters' candidate preferences, but the Supreme Court just let them get away with not doing so supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf…
GOP gerrymandering in Texas likely cost Dems 5 House seats in 2016, more than any other state. The Supreme Court just reversed a ruling that found this map intentionally discriminated against Latinos, possibly costing them 3 seats supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf… dailykos.com/stories/2017/7…
