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Selma 50 yr anniversary thread
- Thread starter Dot Com
- Start date
- Banned
- #22
North Carolina Is Our Selma
An Open Letter from Dr. William J. Barber, II (one of our leaders in NC)
Saturday, March 7, 2015
In 1950, fifteen years before the Selma-to-Montgomery march, William Faulkner, one of the South’s greatest authors, wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In 2015, as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Faulkner’s insight is as true as ever.
Nearly two years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled to hollow out the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing several state legislatures, mostly in the South, to open their bags of disenfranchisement tricks and pass voter suppression laws aimed at curbing the progressive vote. Chief Justice John Roberts tried to justify the Court’s 5-4 decision by writing, “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy the problem speaks to current conditions.”
Underscoring the naive nature of that statement, then-North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis and his regressive coalition in the General Assembly promptly signed into law the worst voter suppression bill since Jim Crow. The Supreme Court gutted the VRA on June 25, 2013. Forty-eight days later, on August 12, North Carolina’s elected leaders enacted a law that not only requires a government-issued photo I.D. to vote in 2016 and after, but also reduced the early voting and Sunday voting period and eliminated same-day-registration, out-of-precinct voting, and pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who would be 18 on Election Day. Last fall, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, “These measures likely would not have survived federal preclearance,” which had been maintained for nearly five decades to prevent exactly the sort of legislation we saw passed in North Carolina weeks after the Shelby ruling.
In our state, the voter suppression law has often been referred to as a Voter I.D. law, thereby giving it an air of “common sense,” as our legislators like to say. But it has done so much more to disenfranchise North Carolinians than merely require a photo I.D.—although that has been proven to be discriminatory enough in itself.
This summer, two years after the Supreme Court ruling and the enactment of North Carolina’s voter suppression law, the North Carolina NAACP and other progressive constituencies—along with the U.S. Department of Justice—will challenge the discriminatory motives and effects of the Tillis law aimed at obstructing progressive votes in North Carolina. We are confident that we will win our case, which we filed 47 minutes after the legislation was passed in 2013.
We should never have had to prosecute it in the first place. We should never have had to file this lawsuit. And our work would be much more difficult were it not for the tireless, pro-bono work of the Advancement Project. But our own legislators forced us into this corner. Instead of finding ways to make voting easier for all North Carolinians, they spent their time building new barriers around our right to vote.
We are glad that Ava DuVernay made a powerful movie based on a very powerful moment—and movement—in this nation’s history. But Selma is much more than a movie. It is a symbol of challenging those who would limit access to the most fundamental practice of a democracy. In North Carolina, we are called to challenge those who, in the 21st century, have decided to make voting much more difficult for thousands of people.
Selma is not dead. It's not even past. It is alive in North Carolina.
An Open Letter from Dr. William J. Barber, II (one of our leaders in NC)
Saturday, March 7, 2015
In 1950, fifteen years before the Selma-to-Montgomery march, William Faulkner, one of the South’s greatest authors, wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In 2015, as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Faulkner’s insight is as true as ever.
Nearly two years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled to hollow out the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing several state legislatures, mostly in the South, to open their bags of disenfranchisement tricks and pass voter suppression laws aimed at curbing the progressive vote. Chief Justice John Roberts tried to justify the Court’s 5-4 decision by writing, “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy the problem speaks to current conditions.”
Underscoring the naive nature of that statement, then-North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis and his regressive coalition in the General Assembly promptly signed into law the worst voter suppression bill since Jim Crow. The Supreme Court gutted the VRA on June 25, 2013. Forty-eight days later, on August 12, North Carolina’s elected leaders enacted a law that not only requires a government-issued photo I.D. to vote in 2016 and after, but also reduced the early voting and Sunday voting period and eliminated same-day-registration, out-of-precinct voting, and pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who would be 18 on Election Day. Last fall, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, “These measures likely would not have survived federal preclearance,” which had been maintained for nearly five decades to prevent exactly the sort of legislation we saw passed in North Carolina weeks after the Shelby ruling.
In our state, the voter suppression law has often been referred to as a Voter I.D. law, thereby giving it an air of “common sense,” as our legislators like to say. But it has done so much more to disenfranchise North Carolinians than merely require a photo I.D.—although that has been proven to be discriminatory enough in itself.
This summer, two years after the Supreme Court ruling and the enactment of North Carolina’s voter suppression law, the North Carolina NAACP and other progressive constituencies—along with the U.S. Department of Justice—will challenge the discriminatory motives and effects of the Tillis law aimed at obstructing progressive votes in North Carolina. We are confident that we will win our case, which we filed 47 minutes after the legislation was passed in 2013.
We should never have had to prosecute it in the first place. We should never have had to file this lawsuit. And our work would be much more difficult were it not for the tireless, pro-bono work of the Advancement Project. But our own legislators forced us into this corner. Instead of finding ways to make voting easier for all North Carolinians, they spent their time building new barriers around our right to vote.
We are glad that Ava DuVernay made a powerful movie based on a very powerful moment—and movement—in this nation’s history. But Selma is much more than a movie. It is a symbol of challenging those who would limit access to the most fundamental practice of a democracy. In North Carolina, we are called to challenge those who, in the 21st century, have decided to make voting much more difficult for thousands of people.
Selma is not dead. It's not even past. It is alive in North Carolina.
- Banned
- #23
Dot Com
Nullius in verba
- Thread starter
- #24
Obama in Selma Ferguson report shows civil rights march is not yet finished US news The Guardian
Barack Obama delivered one of the most poignant speeches of his presidency on Saturday, using the backdrop of Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge to call for an end to the discrimination he said still cast “a long shadow” over America.
“Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished,” the president told tens of thousands who converged on the Alabama town. “But we are getting closer.”
LOL......that's just a wee bit over the top. ......Selma is more significant than the Boston Tea Party that the right is always talking about
- Aug 4, 2009
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LOL......that's just a wee bit over the top. ......Selma is more significant than the Boston Tea Party that the right is always talking about
Not in the least
The Boston Tea Party protested a tax on tea that the colonists were unable to vote for
Selma was a protest against total disenfranchisement. Not just at the voting booth but in society as well
Southern blacks had is worse than American colonialists
Dot Com
Nullius in verba
- Thread starter
- #27
First Family civil rights icons retrace Selma march
SELMA, Ala. — President Obama, speaking Saturday at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, placed Selma in the pantheon of historical sites alongside Concord, Gettysburg, and Kitty Hawk.
Then, arm-in-arm with his wife and daughters, and joined by one of the original marchers, Rep. John, Lewis, D-Ga., and former President George W. Bush, crossed the 1,200-foot steel and concrete bridge over the Alabama River to retrace the path of the bloody civil rights march 50 years ago that transformed America.
- Banned
- #28
John Lewis is here, just saw him
vetteman89
Member
i'm not a huge Barack Obama fan, but he knocked it out of the park today with the speech he made at Selma...............made me proud to be an American!
- Aug 4, 2009
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John Lewis is here, just saw him
He is a great man
- Aug 4, 2009
- 281,406
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They should rename the bridge after John Lewis
.
.
Last edited:
- Aug 4, 2009
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- 2,615
Great to see Bush there
Shame so many other Republicans avoided it
Shame so many other Republicans avoided it
1stRambo
Gold Member
- Feb 8, 2015
- 6,221
- 1,019
- 255
Yo, I see the "Socialist Progressive Democrats" are celebrating what the Democrats did 50 years ago? Beat the HELL out of Blacks!!! Congressman John Lewis remembers "Bloody Sunday" and the KKK Democrats, like it was yesterday!!! Yes, Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1963 said this: "These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them ******* voting Democratic for the next two hundred years". Then a few years later, they got too uppity? Governor George Wallace, another Democrat, said he would not protect those Blacks! So there you have it!
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
View attachment 37534
It was conservatives who delivered the beatings
Most of the marchers were Democrats
Yo, why do you think they were marching dip-S? To vote and no party affiliation?
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
1stRambo
Gold Member
- Feb 8, 2015
- 6,221
- 1,019
- 255
Yo, learn how to source mkay? ThanksYo, I see the "Socialist Progressive Democrats" are celebrating what the Democrats did 50 years ago? Beat the HELL out of Blacks!!! Congressman John Lewis remembers "Bloody Sunday" and the KKK Democrats, like it was yesterday!!! Yes, Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1963 said this: "These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them ******* voting Democratic for the next two hundred years". Then a few years later, they got too uppity? Governor George Wallace, another Democrat, said he would not protect those Blacks! So there you have it!
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
Yo, learn how to spell? "mkay"
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
- Aug 4, 2009
- 281,406
- 142,734
- 2,615
Yo, I see the "Socialist Progressive Democrats" are celebrating what the Democrats did 50 years ago? Beat the HELL out of Blacks!!! Congressman John Lewis remembers "Bloody Sunday" and the KKK Democrats, like it was yesterday!!! Yes, Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1963 said this: "These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them ******* voting Democratic for the next two hundred years". Then a few years later, they got too uppity? Governor George Wallace, another Democrat, said he would not protect those Blacks! So there you have it!
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
View attachment 37534
It was conservatives who delivered the beatings
Most of the marchers were Democrats
Yo, why do you think they were marching dip-S? To vote and no party affiliation?
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
They were marching for freedom and liberty
Something conservatives only give lip service to
- Aug 4, 2009
- 281,406
- 142,734
- 2,615
Thank GOD for Selma, or B.Hussein would NEVER have been produced...Pay attention from the 2:10 mark on! Too bad he was BORN 4 years BEFORE Selma!!!
It must be hard to go through life when you take everything literally
Dot Com
Nullius in verba
- Thread starter
- #39
rofl. Yo, new to the interwebz are you?Yo, learn how to source mkay? ThanksYo, I see the "Socialist Progressive Democrats" are celebrating what the Democrats did 50 years ago? Beat the HELL out of Blacks!!! Congressman John Lewis remembers "Bloody Sunday" and the KKK Democrats, like it was yesterday!!! Yes, Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1963 said this: "These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them ******* voting Democratic for the next two hundred years". Then a few years later, they got too uppity? Governor George Wallace, another Democrat, said he would not protect those Blacks! So there you have it!
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
Yo, learn how to spell? "mkay"
"GTP"
"OBAMA HATES AMERICA"
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