Disparities in education begin at an early age and we as a society need to make a commitment to fund our schools equitably so all students have a chance to succeed.
Category: Discrimination (Page 4 of 11)
“I will expeditiously sign nearly 13,000 individual orders to restore the fundamental rights of the citizens who have had their rights restored and registered to vote. And I will continue to sign orders until I have completed restoration for all 200,000 Virginians.”
For Immediate Release: July 22, 2016
Contacts: Office of the Governor: Brian Coy, (804) 225-4260, Brian.Coy@governor.virginia.gov
Governor Terry McAuliffe released the following statement today following the Virginia Supreme Court decision in Howell v. McAuliffe:
“Once again, the Virginia Supreme Court has placed Virginia as an outlier in the struggle for civil and human rights. It is a disgrace that the Republican leadership of Virginia would file a lawsuit to deny more than 200,000 of their own citizens the right to vote. And I cannot accept that this overtly political action could succeed in suppressing the voices of many thousands of men and women who had rejoiced with their families earlier this year when their rights were restored.
“Forty states give citizens who have made mistakes and paid their debt to society a straightforward process for restoring voting rights. I remain committed to moving past our Commonwealth’s history of injustice to embrace an honest process for restoring the rights of our citizens, and I believe history and the vast majority of Virginians are on our side.
“Despite the Court’s ruling, we have the support of the state’s four leading constitutional experts, including A.E. Dick Howard, who drafted the current Virginia Constitution. They are convinced that our action is within the constitutional authority granted to the Office of the Governor.
“The men and women whose voting rights were restored by my executive action should not be alarmed. I will expeditiously sign nearly 13,000 individual orders to restore the fundamental rights of the citizens who have had their rights restored and registered to vote. And I will continue to sign orders until I have completed restoration for all 200,000 Virginians. My faith remains strong in all of our citizens to choose their leaders, and I am prepared to back up that faith with my executive pen. The struggle for civil rights has always been a long and difficult one, but the fight goes on.”
Three years ago this week — on June 25, 2013 — the U.S. Supreme Court in its Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a civil rights law signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to ban racial discrimination in voting. Within minutes of that decision, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott tweeted that the state’s strict voter ID law should go into effect immediately. The following day, Alabama said it would finally start enforcing the photo ID law it had passed two years earlier. And weeks later, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a monster voter suppression law (H.B. 589) that is still today being challenged in court — and for good reason. North Carolina voters like Dale Hicks, featured in the video below, couldn’t vote in 2014 because of H.B. 589.
Hicks isn’t alone. Voters across the country are facing new voting restrictions passed in the wake of Shelby. In their recent report, “Democracy Diminished: State and Local Threats to Voting Post-Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder,” NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) details both proposed and implemented state, county, and local voting changes in the last three years in jurisdictions formerly covered by the VRA. Beginning in June 2014, for example, Virginia had implemented a photo ID law even though nearly 200,000 voters in the state lacked a driver’s license. This list of voting changes goes on. And on.
The time is now to #RestoreTheVRA
Five of the states previously covered by the VRA (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas) are also competitive in this year’s general election — in the presidential race, but also some senatorial and gubernatorial races. In a new report, “Warning Signs: The Potential Impact of Shelby County v. Holder on the 2016 General Election,” The Leadership Conference Education Fund found that the voter suppression in these states unleashed by Shelbycould impact this year’s election. Now that they’re no longer subject to oversight or accountability, each state has enacted its own set of voting laws that harm voters of color. Unfortunately, leaders in Congress have yet to show any interest in working to solve the problem.
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On the same day Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said he was voting for Donald Trump, note he didn’t say “endorse”, he had to make a statement condemning Trump’s racism. On Tuesday he actually came out and described Trump’s statements toward a judge as “racist.”
Within the same paragraph of describing Trump’s comments as racist, Ryan went on to say that he and his party had more in common with Trump than Hillary Clinton. If Paul Ryan had a soul he lost it last Monday.
I get that. They’re Republicans. They’ve spent over two decades trying to destroy the Clintons. But to say they have more in common with an inflammatory racist than with a Democrat is very telling…and very much Paul Ryan selling his soul in the name of politics.
Several Republicans have come out over the past few days condemning Trump for his racist statements. When someone has to defend themselves from racism because of one comment, then maybe they’re not an actual racist and they have been misunderstood. When you have to keep defending someone over SEVERAL racist comments, then the game is up. That tool bag is a racist. Are they really running with the campaign of “vote Trump. He’s really not a racist.”?
A telling sign that someone is a racist is when they’re playing the black-friend defense. Other than Trump screaming at a rally “where’s my African-American,” he’s gone on to tell us again and again how he’s hired people of different races. Yeah, with that analogy slave owners just loved black people. You don’t get a get-out-of-racism-jail-free card with that crap.
Every political cartoonist gets accused of being a racist at some point. We’re also accused of being Nazis, Communists, Traitors, Homosexuals, being without a penis, having sex with livestock, etc. Do you know how I respond to those accusations? I don’t. I don’t worry about having to respond to something that’s not true. My work speaks for itself and a reader without the ability to comprehend really isn’t my problem. Donald Trump has to respond to the racism accusations because they’re true. He also gets upset with the tiny hands comments which is very revealing.
The GOP is very racist. It’s not that they disagree with what Donald Trump is saying. It’s that they disagree that he’s not covert about it. They’re like “shut up. You’re giving away the first rule of Racist Fight Club.” For decades Republicans have cultivated the white vote by screaming about welfare, immigrants, school lunch, quotas, equal opportunity, affirmative action, birtherism, etc. They’re not supposed to go out in public and scream “he’s not good enough because he’s a Mexican.” They like to preserve that stuff for their cigar rooms at their country clubs away from the crowds and media. They’re very good at being covert and imagining welfare queens while winking at poor white voters who are actually on welfare. Minorities are for scapegoating and standing in the background of photo ops. Now they have a nominee too stupid not to say it in public. When Donald Trump shouted at a rally “my African-American” the GOP got off light because Trump was one step away from saying “my n***ger.”
“My n**ger” is a platform Republicans can get with. But it has to be disguised. Disguised with something like, oh…I don’t know….something like “Make American Great Again.”
It’s no laughing matter. Just this week, a Utah father said he got into an altercation with another man in a Walmart bathroom over the weekend after bringing his son and his daughter into the men’s restroom with him.
Chris Adams told Fox 13 Now Wednesday that he had taken his 7-year-old son and his 5-year-old daughter to shop for storage bins at the Walmart in Clinton. During their run, both children needed to use the bathroom.
Adams said he took both of his children into the men’s bathroom. He said another man inside the restroom saw his daughter with him.
“This guy walks in and goes to the bathroom, the urinal,” Adams told KSL Tuesday. “Then he just, like, turns to me and starts freaking out, dropping the ‘F-bomb,’ and what he was freaking out about was that my daughter was in the men’s bathroom.”
He said the man started a fight with him that carried out into the store. Adams said the other man kept saying it was inappropriate for his young daughter to be in the bathroom with him.
Punches were exchanged, but Adams was able to pin the attacker down. Clinton police arrived at the store and found the other man still in the store and cited him for disorderly conduct.
Authorities are reviewing the incident and are deciding whether to press charges, Fox 13 Now reported. Officials have not identified the man.
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