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The Next Big Voting-Rights Fight

Emily Bazelon and Jim Rutenberg New York Times
If you’re no longer drawing lines on population but you’re selectively using criteria like age, that hits [the Hispanic] community very hard. Put aside the whole citizenship issue. The largest group of people who would be subtracted from the apportionment base would be children, and because [Hispanics] have disproportionately so many more children than the Anglo population has, that starts shifting seats all by itself, before you start to even consider citizenship.

'Suffragette' Foregrounds Working-Class Women

Linda Gordon Portside
Suffragette is the first film to depict a women's movement with major Hollywood stars. And Gavron's introduction, skyped in at the preview I saw, was superb, emphasizing global women's struggles and class and race inequality as well as the historical fight for suffrage. As more celebrities come out as feminists, we can hope for more.

Elizabeth Warren Just Gave the Speech that Black Lives Matter Activists Have Been Waiting For

Wesley Lowery; Senator Elizabeth Warren Washington Post
Senator Warren's speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America's commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights, said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent #BLM activist. Warren understands the protests as a matter of life or death - the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence...the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma

Friday Nite Videos -- August 28, 2015

Portside
Videos: John Oliver: Washington DC Statehood. We Need Truth and Reconciliation. Bob Dylan -- Desolation Row at 50. Affordable Housing Crisis. Pastor Dewey Smith: Homosexuality.

John Oliver: Washington DC Statehood

Washington DC experiences taxation without representation. It's also missing from rhyming state songs. John Oliver and a group of singing children fix one of these problems.

Friday Nite Videos -- July 17, 2015

Portside
Ninth Rock From the Sun. War / No More Trouble. Elizabeth Warren Keynotes Netroots Nation. Film: Do I Sound Gay? "Our Selma!" March for Voting Rights

"Our Selma!" March for Voting Rights

As North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory goes to trial for the suppression of Voting Rights in the North Carolina, thousands turn out for the Forward Together Movement’s Mass Moral March for Voting Rights in Winston-Salem.

Tidbits - July 16, 2015 - Response to Occupy; Greece; Debt Forgiveness; Why Bernie Sanders; U.S. Torture Program; Flags, Symbols, Racism; Announcements; More...

Portside
Reader Comments: Response to Occupy; Greece and Debt Forgiveness; Why Bernie Sanders; Confederate Flags, Symbols, and Racism; U.S. Torture Program; Death Penalty; and more... Announcements: Benefit Concert for Civil Rights; Rally for Eric Garner; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and The Voting Rights Act at 50; Rosenberg Case Bombshell - Key Witness Lied; Robert Meeropol statement

Congressional Democrats Introduce an Ambitious New Bill to Restore the Voting Rights Act

Ari Berman The Nation
The 2016 election will be the first in 50 years where voters will not have the full protections of the VRA, Since the Shelby decision, onerous new laws have been passed or implemented in states like North Carolina and Texas, which have disenfranchised thousands of voters, disproportionately those of color. In the past five years, 395 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 49 states. Half the states in the country adopted measures making it harder to vote.
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