John,
Today, the Supreme Court struck a serious blow to our freedom to vote.
In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Supreme Court sided with anti-voter, Jim Crow politicians who are silencing our voices. With a 6-3 ideological split, they ruled to uphold Arizona's discriminatory voting laws and make future challenges against anti-voter laws even more difficult.
This will lead to
more mass anti-voter attacks that will disproportionately impact Black folks. The 389 bills that we've seen introduced across the country this year just got a clear signal to move forward.
These unelected justices won't protect our freedom to vote, so we have to use our people-power and turn to the other branches of government: city councils, state legislatures, Congress, the White House -- places where we can elect pro-voter officials. And this is
all while overcoming barriers to vote ourselves.
We need to ramp up our work NOW to elect Black liberation candidates in 2021 and 2022 who will protect our freedom to vote. Can you pitch in $5 or more to fuel that work?
If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
The fact is that the Supreme Court has never been an ally to Black voters, and we are not surprised that this is how the court ruled.
Since the passage of the 15th Amendment, they've ruled over and over again to create loopholes that allow Jim Crow politicians to put up barriers to our freedom to vote. And there is
no mistaking that whether it's poll taxes or restricting vote by mail or shutting down neighborhood polling locations -- it's all with an eye towards suppressing Black voters.
When Mississippi came together after the Civil War to rewrite their state constitution, they made it crystal clear that their goal was to strip Black men of any political power:
“Let us tell the truth if it bursts the bottom of the Universe. We came here to exclude the negro. Nothing short of this will answer.”
-- Solomon S. Calhoun, president of the 1890 Mississippi Constitutional Convention
That ideology has underpinned every attack on our freedom to vote in the over 100 years since.
And despite the promise of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we
still see the Supreme Court punch loopholes wide enough for a Trump rally to march through. They did so as recently as 2013 when they gutted the law in their ruling of Shelby v. Holder -- another landmark ruling that unleashed a flood of racist anti-voter laws.
We cannot trust the Supreme Court to protect our freedom to vote -- we never could. It's always come down to passing laws like the Voting Rights Act, like the For the People Act to protect our freedom to vote. Pitch in $5 to help elect the leaders who will fight every day for laws that defend our fundamental freedom to vote.
In love and solidarity,
Black Lives Matter PAC
