Voter Suppression
In GEN. More on Medium.
The state’s recent legislative session shows how deeply Republicans fear Black voters will once again turn Arkansas blue
Once upon a time, the Arkansas state government was a solid blue oasis in the South. In 2006, Democrat Mike Beebe ran the state as governor while his party swept both chambers of the statehouse, as they had during every election since Reconstruction. Arkansas Democrats also controlled both seats in the U.S. Senate and held one of the state’s four congressional seats. Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, further raising hopes the state might continue to have a Democratic future. At the time, I was teaching in a rural Arkansas school in Helena, a majority Black town. My school…
We need grassroots efforts to counteract red states that impose white supermajority rule on Black citizens
I geared up to vote in person this year because, no matter what, I needed my vote to count in the 2020 presidential election. I researched my state’s laws on election attire ahead of time to ensure my Black Lives Matter shirt would not get me turned away from the polls as it had to voters in Memphis. As a Black man in the suburbs of Arkansas, the constitutional right to vote isn’t something you can always count on. But within minutes of arriving at my voting site, at a non-denominational church in the suburbs, I was inside and able…
Or the end of America as we knew it
If you had asked any disappointed Hillary Clinton voter on January 20, 2017, what they thought the country would look like on the eve of the 2020 election, I think they may have been surprised by the specifics, but not the scale, of the destruction of the country under President Donald Trump.
More than eight million confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 220,000 dead—including 1 in 920 Black Americans. Our cities and schools half-shuttered. The goods trade deficit and federal budget deficit at record levels. Women dropping out of the workforce in droves. Students struggling to complete classes remotely, often…
