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The new Texas bill, SB7, mandates that you can vote with gun permit but not student ID, no online voter registration, individuals must be deputized to register voters, voters under 65 can’t use fear of COVID to vote by mail. In addition, Texas has closed 750 polling places since the U.S. Supreme Court under John Roberts destroyed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with their Shelby vs. Holder decision in 2013.
The post After Record Turnout In 2020, Texas Set To Pass Most Restrictive Voting Laws In The U.S. appeared first on The Seattle Medium.
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
The 2016 Olympics in Rio was a welcome retreat and reminder of the diversity of our world. Seeing the highest levels of athletic performance compete is inspirational.
Black athletes from around the world stepped to the highest level on the winners platform to claim their gold. Lilly Workneh, Black Voices Senior Editor of the Huffington Post compiled a comprehensive list of black athletes that won gold entitled, These Black Athletes Powerfully Dominated The 2016 Olympics, a portion of the article is below:
It’s official: The 2016 Rio Olympic Games have claimed their space in black history.
For some black Olympians this year, the road to Rio has been a tumultuous one. But these athletes, like many others, have sacrificed sweat, blood and tears to earn distinguished triumph. They’ve defeated the odds, broken barriers and set records in their journey to success ― many of which have earned them prestigious gold medals, some even in predominantly white sports, like swimming.
It’s time, then, to get acquainted with these incredible black athletes and all they’ve accomplished at this year’s Olympic Games.
Simone Manuel: Team USA, Swimming
Gold medalist USA’s Simone Manuel celebrates her historic win at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
Simone Manuel, 20, made history on Aug. 11 when she became the first black woman to earn a gold medal in individual swimming. Manuel, who is from Houston, Texas, tied for the top place medal with Canadian Penny Oleksiak.
Manuel burst into tears following her epic win and acknowledged just how much the emotional victory meant to her and millions around the world. It’s a significant win, especially considering swimming’s racist past. “This medal is not just for me,” she said in an interview following her epic win. “It’s for all the people who believe they can’t do it.”
Simone Biles: Team USA, Gymnastics
Simone Biles of the USA performs her balance beam routine during the artistic gymnastics women’s individual all-around final event at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
Simone Biles is a formidable
Why is there so much concern about the potential for lower voter turnout in communities of color, particularly among Black and Latino men? A good portion of the answer lies in the results of the 2016 Presidential Election, when, for the first time in twenty years, the nation saw a drop in the turnout rate for Black voters.
The post Obstacles vs. Apathy: Increasing Voter Turnout in Communities of Color appeared first on The Bay State Banner.
Living life in a body coated with oils and butters, relief from the drought.
My Black body will not be used as a shield or weapon today.
This body is what happens when love enters the space.
Today my steps will be ordered like a deep bass line, representing the heartbeat of the ancestors who aren’t here.
This Juneteenth and every day, I want—we want to live.
Dear Editor
It is very plausible that 464,565 Guyanese cast their ballots in 2020.
The article Very plausible that 464,565 Guyanese cast their ballots in 2020 appeared first on Stabroek News.
Former President Barack Obama released a statement on Monday, June 1 encouraging protesters of the George Floyd murder to further their activism once they leave the streets.
Released via online publishing platform Medium, Obama touched on the ways that activists can create real change in their communities when the protesting ends.
“… the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels,” he explained.
Obama went on to say that activists need to get specific about their demands for criminal justice and police reform, as well as find the best ways to educate their community members about what needs to be done.
Obama ended his public posting on Monday by sharing a video of George Floyd’s brother, Terrence Floyd, encouraging protesters to be nonviolent and vote.
Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator. She was the first woman of African-American descent, and the first of Native American descent, to hold a pilot license.[1] [2] [3] She achieved her international pilot license in 1921.[2] [3] [4] Born to a family of sharecroppers in Texas, she went into the cotton fields at a young age but also studied in a small segregated school and went on to attend one term of college at Langston University. She developed an early interest in flying, but African Americans, Native Americans, and women had no flight-school opportunities in the United States, so she saved up money to go to France to become a licensed pilot. She soon became a successful air show pilot in the United States, and hoped to start a school for African-American fliers. She died in a plane crash in 1926 while testing her new aircraft. Her pioneering role was an inspiration to early pilots and to the African-American and Native American communities.
Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children to sharecroppers George Coleman, who was mostly Cherokee and part African-American, and Susan, who was African-American.[5] [3] [6] When Coleman was two years old, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where she lived until age 23.[6] Coleman began attending school in Waxahachie at the age of six. She had to walk four miles each day to her segregated, one-room school, where she loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student. She completed all eight grades in that school. Every year, Colemans routine of school, chores, and church was interrupted by the cotton harvest. In 1901, George Coleman left his family. He returned to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory, as it was then called, to find better opportunities; but Susan and her family did not go along. At the age of 12, Bessie was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church School on scholarship. When she turned eighteen, she took her savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma
Niger, in West Africas Sahara region, is four-fifths the size of Alaska. It is surrounded by Mali, Algeria, Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Benin, and Burkina Faso. The Niger River in the southwest flows through the countrys only fertile area. Elsewhere the land is semiarid.
Republic, emerging from military rule.
The nomadic Tuaregs were the first inhabitants in the Sahara region. The Hausa (14th century), Zerma (17th century), Gobir (18th century), and Fulani (19th century) also established themselves in the region now called Niger.
Niger was incorporated into French West Africa in 1896. There were frequent rebellions, but when order was restored in 1922, the French made the area a colony. In 1958, the voters approved the French constitution and voted to make the territory an autonomous republic within the French Community. The republic adopted a constitution in 1959 but the next year withdrew from the Community, proclaiming its independence.
During the 1970s, the countrys economy flourished due to uranium production, but when uranium prices fell in the 1980s, its brief period of prosperity ended. The drought of 1968–1975 devastated the country. An estimated 2 million people were starving in Niger, but 200,000 tons of imported food—half U.S.-supplied— substantially ended famine conditions.
The 1974 army coup ousted President Hamani Diori, who had held office since 1960. The new president, Lt. Col. Seyni Kountché, chief of staff of the army, installed a 12-man military government. A predominantly civilian government was formed by Kountché in 1976.
In 1993, the countrys first multiparty election resulted in the presidency of Ousmane Mahamane, who was then deposed in a Jan. 1996 coup. In July, the military leader of the coup, Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, was declared president in a rigged election. Considered a corrupt and ineffectual president, Maïnassara was assassinated in April 1999 by his own guards. The National Reconciliation Council, responsible for the coup, kept its promise and held democratic elections; in Nov.
Alvin Ailey was born in Rodgers, Texas during the Great Depression. He overcame racism, poverty, and homophobia to become one of the most celebrated choreographers in American history. His single teenage mother Lula Ailey washed clothes, picked cotton, and worked in domestic service in various Texas towns. In Milano, Texas, Ailey attended Mount Olive Baptist Church, spending joy-filled hours that would shape his signature masterpiece, Revelations, 24 years later.
Following the westward migration during World War II, mother and son moved to Los Angeles, California. Ailey graduated from Jefferson High School in South Central, where he became interested in dance through fieldtrips and personal excursions to Central Avenue, a thriving home to African American clubs, theaters and performance venues. During their junior year, Carmen de Lavallade, a classmate who also became an influential dancer and choreographer, introduced him to the Lester Horton‘s dance studio.
Ailey attended college briefly, but he soon returned to performing in Horton’s Dance Theatre. In 1953, Horton died suddenly and twenty-three year old Ailey became the company’s artistic director. Ailey danced in the film Carmen Jones, before making a major impact in a Broadway musical late in 1954, partnering his old friend, de Lavallade. With choreography by George Balanchine and Herbert Ross, the short-lived House of Flowers was a milestone in the young dancer’s career.
Ailey stayed on in New York, developing an approach that mixed Katherine Dunham’s unique modern style with elements of ballet, African, jazz, and Cuban dance. In March 1958, Ailey’s newly established company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, performed to ovations at the 92nd Street YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association). As the civil rights movement grew and spread, Ailey’s celebrations of black traditions and music were linked to the struggles for equality and social justice. In 1988, a year before his death, Ailey received Kennedy Center Honors for his lifetime
New Findings Reveal Stark Racial Disparities and Barriers to the Ballot
WASHINGTON, DC –Leading civil rights organizations today released a new analysis that reveals stark racial disparities and troubling patterns in voter turnout during Wisconsin’s April 7, 2020 primary, held during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The analysis, “COVID-19 Silence Voters of Color in Wisconsin,” was conducted by data experts from Demos and All Voting Is Local, a project of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Reviewing voter data from last month’s Wisconsin primary, the groups found significant gaps in voter participation across the state – exposing existing flaws in our election system and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black and brown voters who already face significant structural barriers at the ballot box.
“Our analysis shows how COVID-19 has exaggerated problems in our election system,” said Dr. Megan A. Gall, All Voting is Local’s national data director, “We know African Americans and Latinos have long faced barriers to the ballot.
The analysis further highlights that for wards with higher Black and Hispanic populations in Milwaukee, average voter turnout was 30 percent lower than the average voter turnout in white wards.
(CMC): More than 383,000 voters in Suriname will go to the polls on Monday to elect a new government amid predictions that voter turnout could decline.
The paper reported that another setback for the polls is likely to be a “polluted’ voters list.
The National Democratic Party (NDP) of President Desi Bouterse, has dismissed an opinion polls published on Friday indicating that the ruling party would be defeated in the election.
In the 2015 poll, the party won 27 of the 51 seats and 80 per cent of the votes cast.
The research agency, Idos, in a statement Friday noted: “With a few days to go to the ballot box on May 25, a substantial part of the voters can still be counted among the floating voters.
Following the 2016 election, the fight for voting rights remains as critical as ever. Politicians across the country continue to engage in voter suppression, efforts that include additional obstacles to registration, cutbacks on early voting, and strict voter identification requirements. Through litigation and advocacy, the ACLU is fighting back against attempts to curtail an
by Najee El-Amin - In 2016, Mississippi’s voter turnout rate took a nosedive as 70,000 eligible citizens did not show up to cast a ballot. Activists have been trying to figure out why this happened and how to get African Americans, a powerful voting bloc, energized and back to the polls. Their efforts are coming […]
Even the very Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863 had little meaning to many Blacks who were omitted from the order and left in bondage in the very states fighting on the side of the Union to supposedly free them, as only those in the slave holding states—states fighting against the nation—were freed by Lincoln’s order.
This news of liberation came two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and six months after Congress passed the 13th Amendment, another example of how, once again, the nation failed to make the freedom of Black people a priority as evidenced by the two and a half year delay in notifying them they were free.
Today, as we celebrate the freedom of slaves in Galveston, Texas 155 years hence, America is at a crossroads and many Black Americans are asking whether they are totally free today?
Black men have turned up dead, their bodies dangling mysteriously from trees in public places and officials have been quick to call their deaths’ suicides—that is until members of the community are rising-up and asking for full and complete are dying from COVID-19 in unconscionable numbers in a nation with unlimited resources, not because of underlying morbidity (though it makes them more vulnerable), but as a direct result of institutional and systemic racism that has prevailed in this country since slavery, through the Emancipation Proclamation, through the 13th Amendment, through passage of the Voting Rights Act, through the implementation of Affirmative Action, even beyond the election and two terms of the nation’s first Black president and on to today.
Certainly, there has been progress for some segment of the Black community, but not enough and far too many Blacks in this nation continue to strive in hopes of a better day—the promise they celebrate each Juneteenth.
Jeff to this exclusive episode of ESSENCE Podcast Network’s podcast Yes, Girl!
podcast to talk about mental health awareness, his critically acclaimed upcoming film Miss Juneteenth and the ways in which Black Americans can organize for a better justice system in America.
We have to no way to be born in this country as a black person—as a person of color, but especially as a black person, with all the images that we see every day, and the history, and the things that we experience— without having poor mental health as a basis.”
And we celebrate that— especially in Texas, but it’s like July 4th for Black SOMETHING BETTER THAN CURRENT “JUSTICE” SYSTEMS
“So my thing is, we try to seek justice through these systems that were literally built to harm us.
TOPICS: Celebrity News Yes, Girl Podcast Ahmaud Arbery black podcasts Breonna Taylor george floyd injustice Insecure Issa Rae Juneteenth justice for Ahmaud justice for black women Kendrick Sampson Miss Juneteenth organizing Podcast Police Brutality yes girl podcast
Mary Sheffield wants residents involved
With Republican-led voter suppression efforts ramped up, one could make a legal argument of gross negligence about our election system. But can anyone prove it?
… , by contrast, pundits often portray Black Americans as an undifferentiated mass – loyal … of Black Americans as Democratic loyalists.
Our new survey of 1,215 African Americans … fewer than half of young Black Americans surveyed in battleground states say …
By Cash Michaels and Peter Grear, Greater Diversity News If preliminary data estimates on the recent 2020 primaries in North Carolina are accurate, student voters on HBCU campuses must raise their turnout game come the general election this November. So says Dr. William Busa, founder of EQV Analytics, a ‘North Carolina-focused campaign consulting firm serving
The GOP’s relentless war on alleged rampant voter fraud targets, not thousands, as many critics have noted, but millions of eligible voters.
by Dr. John E. Warren It appears that two important things have happened since the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota: (1) police continue to kill Black men and women either by shooting them or physically killing them by hand. One would think that with the repeated airing … Continued
The post One year after George Floyd: America and the police appeared first on New Pittsburgh Courier.
