Time to Rethink

If you are a naturalized citizen or belong to the minority, it is time to rethink; If you believe USA is the beacon of human rights, it is time to rethink; if you believe that it will not affect you, ask the Japanese who have been interned- it is time to rethink; If you believe that you have a right to life, liberty and pursue happiness, start to rethink.

Stop calling yourself a Republican, If you are Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative: Today, the Highest Court of the Land “Put a dagger through the heart” according to Mr. John Lewis, a senior Congressman, who was one among the thirteen who framed the Voter ID Law in 1965.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge: Time to know if it matters.

In 1965 voting rights was a complicated issue. African Americans were being attacked for wanting to vote. In Selma, Alabama, voting rolls were 99% White and 1% African American. The case of Jimmie Lee Jackson showed how African Americans were treated; as state troopers and other locals started a fight with some 400 African American demonstrators, Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot in the stomach, and he died eight days later. As word reached the people, including Martin Luther King, Jr., a plan for a peaceful march on the state's capitol was made. There were many acts just like this one that involved killings, and many more that involve economic and health problems. Bloody Sunday: The days and months leading up to Bloody Sunday were very chaotic and stressful as blacks were being targeted by whites as they went to register to vote. Most blacks were laughed at or harassed, but some were even beaten or killed. The black registered voters were also hit hard economically, in addition to physical abuse. Some were refused federal food aid, some refused credit at local banks and stores, and some were fired from their jobs.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Due to the events on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the many people who came to march walked away with a huge accomplishment. The Voting Rights Act made discriminatory voting practices illegal and put a stop to the persecution of the African Americans who had been working for the cause. Section 4 of the Act ended the requirement of literacy tests in six of the Southern states. These states included: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Section 5 stated that no one could make a change to their voting rules unless first authorized by a three-judge court, the District of Columbia, or by the Attorney General of the United States.

Mr. Lewis was an inch away from death, when he was bludgeoned by the protectors of this Nation when he made that historical walk in Selma, Alabama. He lived long enough to represent his constituent to remind the newer generations that freedom was not got easy, that blood was shed, that it was a march to represent the cry of anyone who believed that their voice mattered, that it just not represented the blacks right to vote, but yours and mine, that none of us could have have taken for granted if not for the hard fought battle, where and when many sacrificed their lives, lived with the scars, only to see a better tomorrow.

Mr. John Roberts, the Chief Justice, said Congress should enact the law based on today’s circumstances and not what was enacted forty years ago, knowing fully well of the dysfunctional Congress that is representing its constituents today. He was aware of what happened in 2012, when several States, Republican run, holding both bodies of the assembly- to my knowledge at least 24, enacted many State laws that but for the intervention of DOJ would have disenfranchised many minorities, in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and the remaining 8 States scrutinized under the voter ID law, and would have let Mr. Romney take the reigns of this country. A county in Texas where the whites were in minority and the colored were a majority on a 1:10 population tried to reduce the voting places to a minimum number with the majority of voting booths that were said to be in white neighborhoods. One is aware of the actions of a majority Republicans in Pennsylvania who said that getting every minority show an ID would eventually get Mr. Romney take the State, knowing well that when it comes to putting food on the table for their children or getting their ID for a price, the minority would prefer their children. What’s changed is“The burden is on individual voters to prove they were discriminated rather than on the select jurisdictions included in Section 4 to prove they aren’t discriminatory”- Emma Roller.

The Court dealt a blow to Section 5 of the voting rights act, championed by Martin Luther King who had a dream as quoted here: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together”. And Chief Justice Robert killed that dream.

What was done to us needs a reminder of history that helps one to understand Section 5. “When the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, almost no African-Americans were registered to vote in the Deep South due to brutal repression and sickening legal chicanery. Civil rights litigators and the Department of Justice were doing their best to help. They filed lawsuit after lawsuit to make it possible for blacks to register. But every time a court deemed one discriminatory practice illegal, local officials would switch to another. Literacy tests, poll taxes, burdensome registration requirements—these techniques were all used to prevent African-Americans from voting. Southern voting registrars would even resign from their positions as soon as a lawsuit was on the cusp of succeeding, thereby sending the case back to square one. The Voting Rights Act aimed to change all of this.

Section 5 was the most important and imaginative provision in the law. It required certain states and jurisdictions, mostly in the South, to ask the federal government's permission before making any change—no matter how small—in the way they run elections. Until a rule was "precleared," it could not go into effect. This unusual provision solved the central problem of voting-rights enforcement during the civil rights era—keeping up with the increasingly creative strategies recalcitrant state and local governments used to disenfranchise voters. Section 5 shifted the burden of inertia, allowing the Department of Justice to get one step ahead of local officials”. The worst aspect of Section 5 ruling that goes under the radar is as stated below: “ The worst aspect of the loss of Section 5 won’t be the widely publicized laws like voter ID requirements, which depress minority turnout. The worst part will be the little stuff—the changes to local school board and city council elections that are too small to make headlines. Like this fight over how to elect the school board in Beaumont, Texas, waged along racial lines. Without Section 5, the Brennan Center for Justice warns in a recent report laying out what’s at stake, “the public might not even know about such changes sufficiently in advance of an election to seek relief from the courts.” Or if the public does know, it will all seem technical and small-bore. And any problems will seem to be Congress’ fault, anyway”.

Bush in 2006, when he signed to renew the law for another 25 years, declared:“Congress has reaffirmed its belief that all men are created equal,". "The right of ordinary men and women to determine their own political future lies at the heart of the American experiment," Bush recalled. He said the Voting Rights Act proposed and signed by then-President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 "broke the segregationist lock on the voting box." “In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by a vote of 98-0 in the Senate and 390-33 in the House (and President George W. Bush signed it into law). Now, five justices have swept away the decision of all of those elected leaders – over the vociferous dissent of four other justices. At his confirmation hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts – who wrote today’s majority opinion – famously declared that as a justice, “my job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” But in nullifying one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history, he picked up a bat and swung for the bleachers”.- Adam Cohen.

All of us, who have embraced this Country, have to pause. Is it OK to ignore what our children will one day suffer because of our silence today or have the guts to stand up and question the decision of the Supreme Court on its narrow decision of 5 to 4.

Ruth Ginsburg in her dissent wrote: “Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today,” she wrote. “The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. Instead, it relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story.”

Ms. Ginsburg continued,“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,”. Ginsburg added, “The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the VRA has proven effective,” . she ended by saying, “The Court appears to believe that the VRA’s success in eliminating the specific devices extant in 1965 means that preclear­ance is no longer needed. … With that belief, and the argument derived from it, history repeats itself.”

It is time to rethink.