[1]Stand Up America

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Want more context for this email? Watch this video for background on rights restoration.

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Have you ever read a book so powerful that it set you on a path that would change the rest of your life? For me, that book is Michelle Alexander’s "The New Jim Crow."

It was handed to me in 2013, when I was 20 years old. I had never read anything like it. Among other things, the book explores how the Jim Crow system is still alive and well, excluding Black Americans from our democracy through felony disenfranchisement. 

I had never seen this issue spelled out so clearly before: The practice of stripping voting rights from incarcerated people is specifically designed to keep someone who looks like me from participating in our democracy. 

In law school, I dedicated myself to researching how disenfranchisement laws impact Black Americans, even publishing a journal article on it! Now, I get to fight to restore voting rights every day at Stand Up America.

You can read Alexander's book (I can’t recommend it enough!) but I’m here to give you the headlines on why felony disenfranchisement is a crisis in American democracy:

Over 5 million people can’t vote because of a current or previous felony conviction. That’s a lot of people! Based on the last census count, that is approximately the same number living in Alabama. Think about that: an entire state’s worth of voting-age Americans with no say in electing our leaders.

These laws were specifically designed to box out Black people, and it shows. 1 in 16 Black Americans of voting age are barred from casting a ballot because of felony disenfranchisement laws. That’s four times the rate of incarceration for non-Black folks.

When we take away someone’s right to vote, their children are left voiceless. In Illinois, for example, around 38,000 people are currently incarcerated and denied the right to vote—leaving approximately 100,000 children denied an advocate at the ballot box. And that’s only one single state.

For me, this is really straightforward: All Americans deserve to have a say in the laws they are governed by. The right to vote is an American principle, so by re-enfranchising people with felony convictions, we’re fulfilling America’s founding promise.

I’ve spent a long time learning this legal history, but I know that not everyone knows where these laws even come from. That’s why we’ve put together a video to help explain the history of felony disenfranchisement and why it’s so crucial that we fight for rights restoration around the country. Click here to watch now:

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WATCH THE VIDEO

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My hope over the next few months is that I can help spark the same sort of journey that I had when I picked up “The New Jim Crow” many years ago. Knowledge is power.

We’ll be back soon with more updates on how to further the fight for rights restoration. In the meantime, thanks for tuning in. 

Reggie Thedford
Deputy Political Director, Stand Up America

PS. Ready to help spread the word? Share the video with your friends and family to get more Americans involved in the fight to restore voting rights.

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