US Supreme Court Justices Gut Voting Rights Act

Yesterday marked a day in civil rights history, that many activist's probably thought they'd never see. 

A 5-4 decision to remove section 4 of the Voting Rights Act authored by ultra-conservative Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, tore down key components of the VRA including parts that designate which parts of the country, must have changes to their voting laws cleared by the federal government or in federal court.

The Voting Rights Act has recently been used to block a voter ID law in Texas, and delay the implementation of another in South Carolina. Both states are no longer subject to the pre-clearance requirement because of the court’s ruling on Tuesday.

Since the striking down of the VRA states like North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas are already pushing through changes to voting laws that restrict minorities from voting. Voter ID laws and gerrymandering of the districts were discussed among republicans after President Obama, had just won his second term in office. And you can best believe those incremental changes will be reintroduced as a write into law.

Activist's have since denounced the Supreme Court ruling stating that,

“The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation's most important and effective civil rights laws,” Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. 

“Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades. Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.”

We have to denounce this hack on our liberties. It will be hard but we can't just let what are ancestors lived and died for be in vain. Those rights were put in place for all of us back in 1965, and its been protecting us every since. 

Our people loved us, and thought enough of us to protect us, and we must do the same for the next generation of our children; as poet Maya Angelou put it, "You've already been paid for."

If we sit and do nothing, we'll look up one day and see ourselves reliving the same slavery movies that we watch today. And the next generation will literally be the slavery movie until another Harriet Tubman, Abe Lincoln, MLK, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, JFK, Lyndon B. J., or Barack Obama, come along to rescue a nation of people from fascism and oppression.

#WeGotToGetItTogether 

2013 LA