KEEP HOPE ALIVE with REV. JESSE JACKSON

Sunday, March 4, 2012

 

Voting Rights and the SELMA to MONTGOMERY MARCH Commemoration…

47 years ago, David Wallace, Gary Masoni, I and a group of our fellow seminarians from the University of Chicago, set out for the Selma to Montgomery March…Having heard about the deaths of Jimmie Lee Jackson and Rev. James Reeb, we felt that we had no choice but to go and join this fight for the voting rights for all Americans…

In late 1963, Rev. James Bevel, his then-wife Diane Nash Bevel and James Orange, were organizing Black people to vote in Bevel’s Birmingham Voting Rights Project …Their pioneering work led Mrs. Amelia Boynton to invite them to Selma to help them in their efforts to vote in December of 1964…

Rev. Bevel’s role as SCLC’s Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education made him the perfect architect of this groundbreaking campaign…

Indeed today, historically and in hindsight, this march---actually, a series of three marches beginning on “Bloody Sunday”, March 7th 1965 and culminating in a march to the Alabama capitol on March 25th---is the watershed moment of the modern American civil rights movement…This march and its organizers and martyrs, are the direct links to the Voting Rights Act of 1965---the reason that Americans fully enjoy the voting franchise today…

But, today that right is threatened in ways not seen in the nearly 50 years since it was established…

Right now, these maneuvers to diminish voting rights, and other civil rights and liberties, are underway…

  • Photo ID laws: As of February 2012, 16 state legislatures have introduced bills to require current, government-issued photo ID at the polls. According to a 2006 survey conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, approximately 11 percent of Americans – 21 million citizens – do not have the proper ID…
  • Proof of citizenship: Despite the 9thCircuit Court of Appeal’s reversal of Arizona’s proof of citizenship law, several state legislatures considered laws to require proof of citizenship to register to vote…
  • Limitations on voter registration drives: Several states considered bills that would severely restrict voter registration drive activity. Bills under consideration include measures to severely limit the number of applications a community-based voter registration drive may obtain at a time, implement restrictive deadlines and excessive fines, and other policies that will make running community-based drives prohibitive…

Given the challenges that we face as a nation and as global citizens, the upcoming 2012 Presidential, Congressional, state and local elections will be more important than ever…But, will your vote count? Or, will you be able to vote at all?

Let’s talk about the Selma to Montgomery March and the threats to our voting rights today…

  • Joining me in studio today is MARK POTOK of the Southern Poverty Law Center…

                                                             

And, rounding out our discussion today are:

  • ATTY. BARBARA ARNWINE, Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law…
  • KEVIN GRAY, noted author, organizer and former President of the South Carolina ACLU…
  • DANNY SCHECHTER, Emmy Award Winning Producer/Documentarian