I just discovered that in her recent publication in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy Melanie Campbell cited my article on voting rights for New Orleans evacuees.
Benjamin Greenberg reported in his In These Times article on 17 November 2005, that there are roughly 219,000 New Orleans evacuees who are voting age [over the age of 18] and estimates that 70 percent of those are Black, which represents 153,300 Black voters who will not have access to the ballot in the 2006 elections. “This is voter disenfranchisement by attrition,” states Greenberg (Greenberg 2005).
(Melanie Campbell, "Right of Return Means Access to the Ballot, Access to Neighborhoods,and Access to Economic Opportunity [pdf]," Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, Volume XII (2006).)
My same article was also cited in congresssional testimony by Wade Henderson, Executive Director Leadership Conference on Civil Rights:
HOUSE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE "VOTING RIGHTS ACT: EVIDENCE OF CONTINUED NEED [pdf]" MARCH 8, 2006.
Maybe I'm bragging a little, but it's great to find that my work has had some lasting value.
BLOG POSTS
COMMENTS
PODCASTS
(BTW: I love the instant preview function. I must say that without exaggeration or conflict of interest: the design of this blog is the clearest and most elegant of any that I have seen.)
I, for one, am very happy that you are celebrating your achievement. Your blog is the time and place to do so and I am celebrating with you. Even more importantly, many of the insights that you put forth in the voting rights piece are invisiblized by other news and research sources. People truly committed to learning about disenfranchisement and advocating against it often have few options beyond the mainstream news sources and the sometimes equally as mainstream and risk-adverse spheres of academe.
In other words, your In These Times article truly did have lasting value because you focused on a specific problem that embodies the AFTERMATH of the disenfranchisement borne of Katrina.
I thought of your writing this week while watching parts of Spike Lee’s documentary on Katrina.
The documentary is quite good and I take nothing away from Mr. Lee’s achievement. I was, however, saddened about the missing stories (or expanded stories) of Mississippian (and not just Louisianian) devastation, real estate abuses, and voting rights disenfranchisement. While the documentary touched on these things, it did not go nearly as incisively into these issues as your work does. It made me feel blessed to have read your work in conjunction with seeing the documentary.
So, please do keeping bragging sometimes: how else are we to know what to celebrate?