Civil Rights

Fair Housing at the Supreme Court

Alan Jenkins — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:41:13 -0500

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear a case with huge implications for equal opportunity in America.

Protecting The Right To Vote

Keith Ellison — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:40:58 -0400

Last month, Dorothy Cooper, a 96-year-old African-American woman from Chattanooga, Tennessee, went to the ballot box to vote. Dorothy was born before women had the right to vote and when Jim Crow laws kept most African-Americans disenfranchised. Despite this, Dorothy has not missed a single election since 1960. Like many seniors, Dorothy has a Social Security card, a local photo ID issued by the Chattanooga Police Department—and a voter registration card.

Dorothy also has a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, and birth certificate. But a new Tennessee law requires all voters to have a valid state-issued voter ID in order to vote in the 2012 election. Because Dorothy took her husband’s name at marriage, the state will not accept her birth certificate (or any of her other forms of identification). And because Dorothy doesn’t have her marriage certificate, having been married decades ago, the state of Tennessee prohibits her from obtaining the ID needed to vote.

Dorothy is not alone. In Indiana, 12 nuns were denied the right to vote in the last presidential election because they didn't have "updated" identification. The facts that some of them had old passports, they were in their 80s and 90s and didn't drive--or that they're nuns--seemed not to be a good basis for affirming their identities.

These are not isolated incidents. They are part of the largest effort to disenfranchise voters since the Jim Crow era, almost exclusively targeting youth and minority voters.. A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice estimates that the Republican effort could make it harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.

This year, thirty-four state legislatures introduced bills requiring photo identification in order to vote. This rash of legislation classifies several previously accepted IDs as unacceptable, and will affect roughly 21 million Americans if they are passed. For the first time in our nation’s history, we would shrink the voting franchise instead of expanding it.

These are solutions in search of a problem. Statistics show an infinitesimal number of proven voting fraud cases occurring in the United States. And these few cases have been successfully prosecuted like any other criminal offense.

Groups promoting these laws, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), argue there's rampant voter fraud. Oddly enough this "fraud" seems to be occurring only within historically Democratic voting blocs like minorities and students. Yet ALEC and others have no problem squashing these groups' voting rights--or the rights of elderly voters. Routinely issued student IDs won't be accepted in some states--including my home state of Minnesota. The elderly, non-drivers, and millions of others will have to get identification. This sounds like a simple process, but imagine an 80 year old grandmother who has never driven and uses a wheelchair going through the process of getting non-drivers ID. If her social security card is accepted identification for her benefits, why isn't it good enough to identify her for voting?

For these reasons, I am introducing two bills today to curb voter suppression. The Same Day Registration Act would require states to provide for same day voter registration for a federal election. The Voter Access Protection Act would make sure election officials cannot require photo identification in order to cast a vote or register to vote.

Eligible voters deserve access to the polls. By passing these bills, we can ensure our nation lives up to its ideals and protect the most fundamental right in our democracy.

Rep. Keith Ellison is a Minnesota congressman and a co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus.

Americans for Constitutional Citizenship

Alan Jenkins — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:41:12 -0500

Congratulations! You’re expecting a baby. There are a million things to do, from getting the nursery in order to buying a car seat and finding a pediatrician. Also, start documenting your family tree. Dig up your passport, and your parents’ passports, and maybe their parents’ too. Otherwise, your baby might not be a full American with full rights and responsibilities. Seriously, if a group of politicians and political operatives have their way.

Last week, The Opportunity Agenda joined with a diverse group of civil and human rights organizations to form Americans for Constitutional Citizenship, a coalition dedicated to protecting the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that all of us who are born on U.S. soil are American citizens. The coalition became necessary when a group of state lawmakers unveiled a scheme to eliminate that guarantee, in the name of addressing immigration. Just a day later, Representative Peter King filed a bill in Congress to do the same thing through federal legislation.

The politicians’ proposals are contrary to our values and interests as Americans. And at a time when our nation needs calm and deliberative solutions, they are politicized distractions designed to turn up the heat on an already overheated debate.

Tampering with the American Citizenship Clause would harm us all. A birth certificate would no longer be proof that you are a citizen, since the proposals would necessitate proof that one or both of your parents were also citizens. That, in turn, would require a new and burdensome federal, state, and local bureaucracy to track ancestry. Americans born after the law’s enactment could have their citizenship constantly called into question, as well as that of their children, and their children’s children.

That’s wrong for Americans, and for America. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution and its American Citizenship Clause are core to what made us one nation out of the violent division of the Civil War. They are central to our liberty and equality as countrymen today, and part of what binds us to this nation, whatever our ancestry.

As a constitutional matter, the proposals could not survive, even if they were enacted. States have no power to define national citizenship in our federalist system. Nor does Congress have the power to legislate away the definition of citizenship that’s embodied in our Constitution.

There’s no question that that definition includes all kids born on U.S. soil, and for good reason. The Framers of the Amendment understood that there would always be groups in our society so vilified that their American-born children’s citizenship would be threatened. When the Amendment was adopted in 1868, those groups included former slaves and their descendants, as well as Chinese immigrants, who were barred from ever becoming citizens by the Chinese Exclusion Act. In crafting the Amendment, the Framers resolved that perpetuating two classes of Americans based on blood and parentage is not in our nation’s interest.

So the proposals are unconstitutional. But they have the potential to do significant damage before they are struck down. They would wreak havoc at hospitals, clerk’s offices, and departments of health. They would feed an ugly politics of Americans challenging the American-ness of American children. They would divide us at a time when we need unity.

That’s wrong for our kids, for ourselves, and for our country.

Holding Arpaio Accountable

Alan Jenkins — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:34:43 -0400

Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known for housing inmates in tent cities in the desert and making them wear pink clothes as humiliation, but also for allegations of racial profiling and abusive treatment of Latinos, inside and outside of his jailhouse.

On September 2, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office, challenging Arpaio’s refusal to demonstrate that his office is complying with federal civil rights laws. Specifically, the suit alleges that the Sheriff’s Office has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race or ethnicity by institutions, like the Sheriff’s Office, that receive federal funds, and requires them to document their compliance.

The litigation is unprecedented in modern times, and recalls the bad old days of the segregated South, when the Justice Department had to sue such bullies and obstructionists as Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who literally blocked the schoolhouse door to African American students seeking to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. (In a poignant coincidence, Jefferson Thomas, one of the Little Rock Nine, passed away the same week in an Ohio care facility).

At present the Arpaio situation is far less dramatic than the Little Rock case, in which President Eisenhower federalized Arkansas National Guard troops to enforce the Constitution and protect nine brave African American students from a violent mob. But, ultimately, the showdown in Maricopa County is about the same basic principles: Equal Justice and Accountability.

Maricopa County chose to receive federal funds to help support its programs and services. And like every other county, city, or state that receives those funds, it agreed to ensure equal justice and equal opportunity in its programs and activities, and to keep and provide records that it is doing so. The Sheriff’s Office must now abide by the law, and by the agreement it made, to show that it is accountable for those funds and to the Constitution of the United States.

Today’s dispute is about information and documentation. But those mundane mechanisms are part of an early warning system developed precisely to avoid the traumatic conflicts of the 1950s and ‘60s. If, among other allegations, Arpaio is violating the human rights of Maricopa’s Latino residents and others, then he and his office must be brought to justice. If he is not, then the documents sought by the Justice Department will help to vindicate him. Either way, he and his office must be accountable—for the use of public funds, to the Constitution and laws of our land, and to the American values of equal justice for all.

Beware the Geneticaly Modified Giants

Philip Palij — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:20:22 -0400

Please bear in mind while reading this that Monsanto is a huge US globalized corporate, pumping GM crops into the US and world food chain.

Thats right, into your stomach.

The GM/Agricultural Chemical debate is international as this article shows, and for very good reason:

"...Roundup killed off Argentina’s other crops and, according to some, caused mutations in livestock. In humans, long-term contact with the chemical has also been found to causes health problems, including nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting and skin damage. .."

Where Were the Anti-War Demonstrators?

Philip Palij — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:35:21 -0500

Campaign for Americas Future every so often carries stories along the lines of "Where is the outrage?". This article from a peace activist asks the question but takes it one step further and gets out to find out for himself why peace demos are so poorly attended

Great read, the comments too. The MANY excuses and the guilty consciences.

Coming Clean on the Stimulus

Alan Jenkins — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:34:33 -0400

A report issued by the White House and the Education Department on Monday showed that the federal economic stimulus package (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) has so far created or saved 250,000 education jobs. The report is the first hard evidence of the Recovery Act’s contribution to the nation’s economic health, and previews more extensive data that will be released October 30.

The report is good news for at least two reasons. First, it documents how public investment is helping to pull the nation back from the brink of a devastating economic depression. And, second, it includes crucial information that should inform the ongoing investment of stimulus funds to achieve a full recovery—especially when it comes to job creation. In analyzing the full October data, however, it is important to ask not only how many jobs were created and what infrastructure was built, but also whether we are investing in a lasting economic recovery that will include our entire nation.

Because stimulus funds are flowing largely through traditional state and local channels, particular attention is needed to ensure that they reach the communities and populations that need them most, that distribution is fair and transparent, and that progress is measured in terms of greater and more equal opportunity for all Americans.

If the last year has shown us anything, it is that we are all in it together when it comes to the economy. When all communities have access to jobs, education and health care, and can contribute to our economy through spending, taxes, and entrepreneurship, we all do better. And when millions of our people are shut out from economic participation, we are all held back. It’s in our national interest to foster the economic participation of all Americans, and to invest in the infrastructure of opportunity, particularly where it’s been ignored in the past.

Monday’s education report includes some encouraging details on this front. It reports, for example, that schools in Lafayette, Indiana are using Recovery Act funds to extend the school day and year in two schools with the highest rates of poverty. West Hartford, CT is using funds to provide after-school math and reading help for the town’s neediest elementary schools, and Hillsborough County, FL is using its incentive pay program to attract and keep highly-qualified teachers working with the most at-risk students. Along with saving hundreds of thousands of jobs, these investments go a long way toward the Recovery Act’s education goal, which is “to stimulate the economy in the short term, while investing in education advancements to ensure the long-term economic health and success of our nation.”

At the same time, however, there continues to be a troubling lack of information about the overall accountability and equity of stimulus investments on the ground. There is no indication in Monday’s report, for example, as to whether innovative efforts to expand opportunity are the norm, or simply sporadic points of light. The report is silent, moreover, on whether African American and Latino students—who are disproportionately concentrated in our nation’s most under-resourced schools—are benefiting from stimulus investments to the extent that their pressing need and overrepresentation in our public schools would dictate. The Administration has done well in identifying such interventions as priorities, but we simply don’t know how or whether they are playing out on the ground.

The same lack of information has plagued the larger recovery effort so far. While the government’s stimulus tracking website—www.recovery.gov—offers some useful information, it is currently inadequate for determining, for example, whether jobs reach women and men on an equal opportunity basis, or whether transportation and health care infrastructure projects are serving communities that reflect comparative need and the growing diversity of our nation.

Lack of transparency has been an even bigger problem at the state and local level. Residents and community groups around the country have been frequently frustrated in their attempts to identify and participate in needed initiatives. And, with a few exceptions like New York City’s NYC Stat website, state and local stimulus tracking sites are strikingly uninformative.

Eight months into the economic recovery, the lack of transparency or a documented focus on greater and more equal opportunity is disappointing. But that can and should change, starting now. For the October 30th data release and going forward, the Administration should document online and in its reporting how each stimulus investment is or is not expanding opportunity to disconnected communities. It should disaggregate employment, education, entrepreneurial, and infrastructure data by race, gender, and disability, as well as by other demographic characteristics like rural/urban/suburban, along which opportunity has frequently been segregated.

In considering future disbursements of Recovery Act funds—some $228 billion in contracts, grants, and loans remains to be distributed—federal agencies should require fund applicants to share with the public detailed information about stimulus project choices, and to invite and consider public input in determining investments. As I have urged before in this column, governments at each level should employ Opportunity Impact Statements to ensure that greater and more equal opportunity for all residents are prioritized.

The stimulus and other timely efforts are helping to stave off an economic meltdown of catastrophic proportions. But the hard work of lasting recovery lies ahead. Moving from fiscal survival to broadly shared economic security and prosperity requires a focus on opportunity for all.

Obama's Wrong Note

Alan Jenkins — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:36:07 -0400

During the presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama spoke eloquently about race in America and its continuing relevance to our national progress. But at the press conference marking his first 100 days, President Obama got it wrong.

Black Entertainment Television reporter Andre Showell asked the President:
“As the entire nation tries to climb out of this deep recession, in communities of color, the circumstances are far worse. The black unemployment rate, as you know, is in the double digits. And in New York City, for example, the black unemployment rate for men is near 50 percent. My question to you tonight is given this unique and desperate circumstance, what specific policies can you point to that will target these communities and what's the timetable for us to see tangible results?”

The President’s response was disappointing. After recounting a number of health care initiatives, he argued that “those probably disproportionately impact African-American and Latino families simply because they’re the ones who are most vulnerable.” He concluded, “so my general approach is that if the economy is strong, that will lift all boats as long as it is also supported by, for example, strategies around college affordability and job training, tax cuts for working families as opposed to the wealthiest that level the playing field and ensure bottom-up economic growth. And I’m confident that that will help the African-American community live out the American dream at the same time that it’s helping communities all across the country.”

Unfortunately, it’s just not true that fixing the economy aiding poor communities will necessarily close the racial opportunity gap. In 2000, after a decade of remarkable economic prosperity, the poverty rate among African Americans and Latinos taken together was still 2.6 times greater than that for white Americans. From 2001 to 2003, as the economy slowed, poverty rates for most communities of color increased more dramatically than they did for whites, widening the racial poverty gap. From 2004 to 2005, while the overall number of poor Americans declined by almost 1 million, to 37 million, poverty rates for most communities of color actually increased. In other words, contrary to the President’s assumption, reductions in poverty do not inevitably close racial poverty gaps, nor do they reach all ethnic communities equally.

Nor will increasing employment, alone, close racial gaps. In 2007, when the economy was still relatively strong, Latinos earned just 73 cents for every dollar earned by whites, and African Americans earned just 75 cents. Latina women earned just 59% of what all men earned. And, as I’ve written in this column before, the statistics on “wealth”—which economists describe as assets minus debt—are far worse: for every dollar of wealth held by whites, Americans of color held only 15 cents.

All of those numbers predate the current economic crisis. They show, among other things, that rising economic tides do not reliably lift all boats.

The president was wrong, but he was not completely wrong. Creating jobs, expanding health insurance, building community clinics, will indeed aid all Americans. And African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans are, in fact, disproportionately unemployed and uninsured. But it will take more than that to ensure truly equal opportunity. It will require attacking predatory lending targeting communities of color. It will require addressing racial bias in employment and housing and in the criminal justice system. It will require investing specifically in abandoned and segregated inner-city schools. And it will require targeting job training and debt counseling, and business opportunities at communities that have been cut off from opportunity.

The thing is, President Obama is trying to do many of those things. He is investing in neglected schools, for example, and reinvigorating the nation’s anti-discrimination enforcement. But to be successful, he will also need to explain to the American people why those steps are necessary.

An Uneven Journey

Alan Jenkins — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:37:45 -0400

Earlier this year, I visited my father, who lives in the Bay Area. As we drove from the Oakland airport, the conversation quickly turned to the Obama presidency. Born in 1923, my dad survived the Great Depression, fought in World War II, endured vicious Jim Crow segregation and violence, participated in the Civil Rights Movement, and, this year, witnessed the inauguration of an African-American president of the United States.

On our drive, he reminisced about how, at age 8, he had gone with his 2nd grade class to see the cavalcade of then-president Herbert Hoover as it drove through downtown Detroit. A year later, the country would throw Hoover out of office for his gross mishandling of the economy, choosing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his message of change. Before my dad’s teen years were through, he would join the Marines and defend a segregated nation from within a segregated military. Traveling to and from southern military bases, he would experience racial humiliation, threats, and violence from white fellow Americans, often while wearing his Marine uniform.

As we marveled at the progress we’ve made as a country, we drove by block after block of boarded up houses in some of Oakland’s African-American neighborhoods, many with foreclosure signs visible. Many homes in the same neighborhoods still sported lawn signs reading “Change” and “Hope.”

As the Obama presidency sinks in, many are interpreting it in absolute terms: arguing either that it shows that racial bias and discrimination are no longer factors in American life, or that the election means little for race relations, reflecting merely a unique confluence of events—a historically unpopular incumbent, a historically bad economy, a gifted politician raised by white folks who ran a flawless 21st century campaign against a pair of tone-deaf 20th century opponents. News media coverage mostly echoed that polarized, simplistic discourse, with an emphasis on the “post-racial America” narrative.

As usual, the reality is not nearly so simple. As my dad said to me back in Oakland, this election reflects a huge step forward, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

The blocks of foreclosed homes in Oakland are a good example of the new world we’re in when it comes to equal opportunity. Despite occasional incidents, the “whites only” real estate signs (and burning crosses) of my father’s day are largely gone. Oakland has an African-American mayor, and a diverse city government. And foreclosures and crushing debt in that city are affecting people of all races.

At the same time, though, it is well documented that people and communities of color have been racially targeted by unscrupulous lenders for sub-prime and, often, predatory loans. Research by The Opportunity Agenda, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council found that people of color were far more likely to receive high-interest subprime loans than were white borrowers with the same income. Indeed, the racial divide in subprime lending is larger among upper‐income borrowers than among lower‐income ones. Predatory lending—a subset of sub-prime lending—has also long been targeted at communities of color. For these and related reasons, people of color have higher rates of foreclosure, whole neighborhoods in communities of color are in danger of deteriorating, and a generation of people of color are losing the most secure path to building wealth: homeownership.

Research shows that discriminatory and predatory lending practices have combined with practices like institutionalized housing discrimination, banking deregulation, and disproportionate disinvestment in communities of color to help perpetuate a racial gap in economic opportunity. Studies have found similar patterns in employment and in other sectors. Indeed, on some measures of equal opportunity we are moving backwards as a nation—our public schools, for example, are more racially segregated today than they were 30 years ago.

Obama’s victory does show that, in a single lifetime, transformative change is possible. Yet it also makes clear that significant progress on one front (or even many) does not guarantee similar progress on all. Accepting and understanding these two co-existent ideas is key to fulfilling our nation’s promise in the 21st century. And crafting new rules for our globalized economy that promote greater and more equal opportunity for all is key to our entire nation’s economic recovery, as well as to our long-term prosperity.

susan b anthony amendment

Fary Gover — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:01:34 -0500

ADAMS -- Exactly 189 years after Susan B. Anthony was born at her family's home at 67 East Rd., the house was opened to the public on Sunday to show off efforts being made to restore the building with the intention of opening a museum dedicated to the late women's rights activist.
susan b anthony amendment

Stocks are modestly higher as President Barack Obama releases details of his $75 billion mortgage relief plan. The plan is designed to help stabilize the housing market and reduce foreclosures.