rights

14Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

Black History Month: Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Voting Rights Activists Can Learn

With Congress failing to pass new voting rights legislation, it’s worth remembering that throughout U.S. history, new civil rights laws designed to end racial inequities across American life have been met by stubborn resistance. Senate Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona joined Senate Republicans in blocking both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. These bills would have combated voter suppression by creating a national automatic voter registration system, and they also would have banned partisan gerrymandering. In the wake of the vote, President Joe Biden said he was “profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for democracy.” These setbacks in Congress come on the heels of millions ...

Howard Fuller – How The Civil Rights Activist Became A Devout Champion Of School Choice

11Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

Howard Fuller – How The Civil Rights Activist Became A Devout Champion Of School Choice

Jon Hale, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign As a longtime civil rights activist and education reformer, Howard Fuller has seen his support for school choice spark both controversy and confusion. That’s because it aligns him with polarizing Republican figures that include Donald Trump and Trump’s former secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. But unlike those figures, Fuller’s support for school choice is not rooted in a conservative agenda to privatize public schools. Rather, it is grounded in his ongoing quest to provide Black students a quality education by any means necessary. I write about Fuller in my new book “The Choice We Face,” which traces the history of school choice as well as demands for radical education reform by Black activists. Unlike most other school choice advo...

How Civil Rights Leader Wyatt Tee Walker Revived Hope After MLK’s Death

9Dec

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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

How Civil Rights Leader Wyatt Tee Walker Revived Hope After MLK’s Death

Four years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the novelist James Baldwin would write on the pages of Esquire magazine, “Since Martin’s death, in Memphis, and that tremendous day in Atlanta, something has altered in me, something has gone away.” Baldwin wrote about how “the act of faith” – that is, his belief that the movement would change white Americans and ultimately America – maintained him through the years of the black freedom movement, through marches and petitions and torturous setbacks. After King’s death, Baldwin found it hard to keep that faith. Nearly two weeks after King’s funeral, in April of 1968, King’s confidant and former strategist Wyatt Tee Walker tried to renew this faith. Drawing on a tradition of black faith, Walker encouraged a grieving communit...

Florida restricts recently restored voting rights to felons

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

VIDEO REELS

Florida restricts recently restored voting rights to felons

Florida has the highest number of people who have been disenfranchised because of their criminal records, say campaigners. Voting rights activists in the US state of Florida say they have been forced backwards by a new amendment imposing restrictions on people with criminal records. More than a million convicted felons had their voting rights restored at the beginning of the year. But now thousands are struggling to get to the ballot box. Al Jazeera's Andy Gallacher reports from Miami.