You know how we keep calling this current era of Uranus square Pluto “the anti-Sixties?” Well, here’s another case of rights suppression to keep the contraception/women’s health issue company. It comes in the form of many states positioning themselves to limit voting rights for minorities and the poor (two populations that often overlap) — as well as students, who generally lack economic power and political voice.
It’s almost as though the conservatives hired an astrologer to pick which issues to roll back. Hopefully it’s more like the last gasp of this kind of oppression before the paradigm shifts for the better. Here’s how it’s being reported by Democracy Now!:
“Since last year, 15 states have passed new voting laws that critics say suppress the votes of the poor, students and people of color. This is the topic of a major speech set for today by NAACP head Benjamin Jealous before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. The NAACP wants a U.N. delegation of experts to monitor the impact of voter identification laws, as well new restrictions on same-day registration, early voting, Sunday voting, and making it harder to run a voting registration drive. Its outreach to the United Nations has been compared to the group’s efforts in the 1940s and 1950s when it sought international support in its fight for civil rights and against lynching.
“[The NAACP’s] visit to the United Nations also comes days after the group joined with thousands of people in Alabama to retrace the historic 1965 civil rights march in Selma. In what became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ on March 7, 1965, police attacked demonstrators at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge as they tried to march for voting rights. Outrage over the crackdown led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”
You can watch or read this entire segment of today’s broadcast here.