Last week’s annexation vote in Mobile, Alabama, added thousands of white residents, reducing the black-white voter gap in the majority-minority city. It’s an effective strategy used by city elites to artificially inflate conservative political power.
In the 1950s and 60s, southern officials — desperate to maintain the racial status quo — regularly ignored court orders affirming the rights of Black Americans. It is happening in 2023.
The expulsions of two Black lawmakers, following large student protests for gun control, are part of a sweeping generational battle, in which “Republicans around the country are pushing for laws to make it more difficult for young people to vote.”
Georgia Republicans have embraced Walker because they think any old Black person will do when it comes to their cynical strategy for defeating Raphael Warnock.
Senate Democrats have the power to end the filibuster and thereby allow the For the People Act to become law. It’s time for Democrats to unite on this, without hesitation.
Voters purged are likely to be “young voters, voters of lower income and citizens of racial groups that have been denied their sacred right to vote in the past,” a report from the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union states.
While I find comfort in Malcolm X’s observation to better have a processed head than a processed mind, this election reminds us of the often stated point that African Americans are not a monolith any more than other ethnic or racial groups...
Despite record turnout, the razor-thin margins that ousted Trump sharply illustrate the important role of field work—in-person conversations and timely personal follow-up by trained canvassers—particularly with Black and Latino working class voters.
No one’s paying much attention to one chunk of the electorate that could prove decisive in 2020. To recognize the other swing voter is to decenter the white moderate in the body politic—where she and especially he has been positioned.
Geoffrey Jacques; Sam Lewis; Carl Davidson; Dolores Dwyer; Lucy Fried; Paul Buhle; Micheal Crockford; Daniel Millstone; Louis Diamond; Damon L. Fordham; Robert Wayne Johnson
Portside
Portside readers respond to two articles on the elections, and how best to remove Donald Trump from the White House and the GOP from controlling the Senate, and defeating Republicans at the state level - the down-ballot races.
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