Marsha Joyner, “40 years on, Voting Rights Act remains landmark”

Marsha has an op-ed in today's Honolulu Advertiser:

The biggest impediment to voting is not the Ku Klux Klan or the White Citizens Council or economic sanctions; it is apathy. The two biggest sources of apathy are oppression and privilege. Privilege enables people to vote their pocketbook, and oppressed people feel there is nothing for which to vote.

Today, far too many people do not appreciate or do not know of the struggles that women, African-Americans, Asians, Pacific islanders and other minorities have gone through for the right to vote.

Consider:

• Not until 1920 were women granted the right to vote.
• In 1946, racial barriers were let down for Chinese and Filipinos so that they could vote.
• In 1952, Japanese, Koreans, and Samoans became eligible for citizenship so they, too, could vote.
• And the 1965 Voting Rights Act removed impediments to voting for everyone.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said, "The nation is entering a mean-spirited attack on civil rights, and with it comes attempts to undermine or eliminate the Voting Rights Act. When President Bush was asked directly to support reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, he refused to make a commitment to extend the Voting Rights Act."

If we are to have peace, justice, and prosperity, we must have open and honest dialogue. We must register to vote and thoroughly participate in our democracy.

Across America, too often it is the lower-income people who have the lowest voter registration, and the people of privilege who have the highest. We need to turn that around.

(Read the rest.)