FORUM On the 50th anniversary of the voting rights act, Republicans make zero references to voting rights DNC Press Guest Columnist They are trying to make voting harder for minori ties, women, young people, and seniors Tonight (Aug. 6), on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, not a single Republican candi date made a single refer ence to the Voting Rights Act. That's not surprising. The fact is that Republicans believe that when fewer people vote - especially minorities, women, students, and the elderly - they win more elections, so they are doing everything they can to make it harder for Americans to vote. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have both attacked early voting in Florida. Ted Cruz championed voter ID laws. Rand Paul belittled the need for the Voting Rights Act noting, "We have an African American president." Chris Christie vetoed early voting legislation in New Jersey. Scott Walker not only signed into law one of the nation's strictest voter ID laws, he turned around and fundraised off of it. Democrats continuous ly fight to ensure that every eligible citizen is able to register, every registered voter is able to vote, and every vote is accurately counted. Democrats want to make it easier to vote because when more people participate, everyone has a voice - Republicans are trying to make it harder. How Republican candi dates stark up on voting rights Jeb Bush signed a law limiting early voting and restricting voting loca tions. "Early voting proved to be so popular in its first test in Florida last year that election supervisors want ed to expand the hours and add more locations. But the Re publican-control led Legislature rejected both requests, and on Monday Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law limiting the hours of early voting and confining it to election offices, city halls and libraries. The new law limits early voting to no more than eight hours a day, changing the old law that allowed early voting at least eight hours a day. Early voting also cannot be held more than eight hours on any weekend, and it must end the Sunday before the election." [St'. Petersburg Times, 6/21/05] Rubio suggesting slashing Florida's early voting period in half - removing the first week - saying that first week "was really not cost effec tive." RUBIO: "But we also know, for example, that in the early stages of the - of campaigns, we used to have a two-week voting period in Florida. The cost-benefit analysis of the first week of voting was really not - was really not cost effective. In essence, the number of people vot ing versus the cost to local governments to comply or to carry out that voting were - the turnout just did n't justify the expenditure in the first week." [The Buzz, Tampa Bay Times, 6/13/12] Scott Walker signed a bill requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. "Ending a decade-long quest by GOP officials, Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill Wednesday requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls." [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 5/25/11 ] Politifaet: Wisconsin's voter id law was one of the nation's strictest. "Gov. Scott Walker has signed a photo ID require ment for Wisconsin elec tions starting in 2012. . . Even in its ' new form, Wisconsin's law is one of the most restrictive, based on our research on accept able IDs and voting proce dures for those without IDs." [Politifaet Wisconsin, 6/12/11] Ted Cruz touted his defense of voter ID laws. "Voter fraud is a serious problem threatening the integrity of our democratic process. Ted Cruz has suc cessfully defended laws requiring voters to show identification and other voter fraud prevention laws that are vital to preserve the integrity of our elections." [Ted Cruz for Senate, accessed 8/13/12] Ted Cruz said he would file an amendment that would allow states to require proof of citizen ship to register to vote. "In an effort to counteract a Supreme Court decision Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R TX) said he intends to file an amendment to immigra tion reform legislation that allows states to require proof of citizenship to reg ister to vote. He billed his amendment as a response to the 7-2 decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, which struck down an Arizona law that required people to prove their citizenship in order to register to vote. The Court held that the state law was in violation of federal law." [Talking Points Memo, 6/17/13] Rand Paul dismissed the need for the voting rights act, saying we're "beyond that now" adding: "we have an African-American presi dent." "The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act ? the map that determines which states and localities must get fed eral permission before they change their voting laws. 'I haven't seen the decision yet so I can't give you a thorough answer other than to say it was a time in our country when the color of your skin did need to factor into voting, but we've real ly gotten beyond that now,' Paul observes. 'We have an African-American presi dent. African-Americans are voting at a higher per centage in the last election than whites. There doesn't seem to be any sort of sys temic problem like there was in the South with pre cluding blacks from voting. So we're at a point in time in our history where the color of your skin should not be taken into account with voting.'" [Newsmax, 6/25/13] Illustration by Ron Rogers for the Chronicle Bush Cruz Paul Rubio Walker A vision for Ferguson, Baltimore, L.A. and Everywhere Gloria Walton Guest Columnist TTiis month, the nation will acknowledge two political milestones. On Aug. 9, we marked the one year anniversary of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Two days later, we marked the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Watts. A third civil dis turbance, located in time between these two, offers lessons learned from the failures of 1965. It provides a blueprint for how we might begin to rebuild Ferguson and the many American communi ties that look like Ferguson. That third milestone is the 1992 unrest in South Los Angeles. In April 1992, L.A. erupted, sparked by the acquittal of police accused of beating an unarmed Black man named Rodney King. The violence that fol lowed cast a national spot light on South Los Angeles and other impoverished L.A. neighborhoods in which liquor stores substi tuted for supermarkets and check-cashing joints served as surrogate banks. In the aftermath of the unrest, it became clear that government and private sector responses would be woefully inadequate to the need. Grassroots communi ty leaders working in L.A.'s lowest income com munities had little option but to do for themselves. That's when the organiza tion I now lead, Strategic Concepts for Organizing & Policy Education (SCOPE), was founded. For more than 20 years, L.A. community organiza tions like ours banded together with residents to elevate the voices of people of color and strengthen their power. We have forged strong" alliances with labor and grassroots groups that advocate for people of color. We engage sophisticated "inside/out side strategies." We understand that elected officials have pow erful forces pushing them and often settle for what's possible instead of what's needed. Independent com munity power helps keep elected representatives accountable to the needs and interests of neighbor hoods and residents. As a result, community organizations in L.A. today are a force to be reckoned with. That's why L.A. recently became the largest city in the country to raise the minimum wage and L.A. County, with 10 mil lion residents, following suit. The raise in the mini mum wage is one of many victories that could not have been won without the strength and power of grassroots community organizations, our partners in organized labor and the support of our allies. In the last 20 years, SCOPE has emerged as a local laboratory for LA. From day one, we were pushing the envelope. Experimenting. How do we build community power and influence? How do we elevate equity in all poli cies? We believe if you start by building a program for people with the most bur dens, facing the greatest barriers, who come from the poorest communities, if you start there and build a program for those commu nities to succeed,then you have a program that will benefit everyone. SCOPE'S 20-year-old jobs model does that. Our model couples entry-level jobs with job-training and apprenticeships to create real career pathways into good-paying union jobs in entertainment, health care and the green economy. These programs go the extra mile by providing paid on-the-job training, mentoring by experienced senior workers and tutoring to help pass certification exams and tests. SCOPE pioneered a neighborhood-based precinct model to engage voters and turn out the vote. We have neighbors talk to neighbors on the phones and at their doors, because we know that's the most effective way to mobilize voters. We also invested in predictive dial ing, an automated dialing program that allows us to reach an exponentially greater number of new and occasional voters. We do sustained engagement over time, during and between electoral cycles, because that's what it takes to turn "new and occasional vot ers" to an "always voter." Engage. Educate. Turn them out. We call it "integrated voter engagement." With it, SCOPE and our allies have won two recent, tide-turn ing initiatives. Proposition 30 generated $9 billion for education and social serv ices. Proposition 47 reclas sified certain nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors, reversing decades of investment in prisons and redirecting resources to treatment and support There is still more work to be done. The South L.A. neighborhood where SCOPE is located has a high percentage of working families struggling to make ends meet and high rates of * violence. L.A.'s economy is obscenely out of balance with per capita income in Bel Air topping $128,000 while comparable South L.A. income is just $13,243. But we have made progress and we will con tinue. South L.A. didn't always look like the neigh borhood that's become infamous in news stories and movies. Sixty years ago. South L.A. was a vibrant middle-class neigh borhood. Many African Americans bought their first homes here. L.A. was a major industrial center for the country. South L.A. was the heart of that indus try. Men and women had jobs that supported fami lies. Children graduated high school and many of them went on to college. That is SCOPE'S vision for the new Los Angeles. It is the vision that our grassroots community counterparts in Ferguson, Baltimore and numerous other American cities hold for the future. Walton is president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Strategic Concepts in Organizing A Policy Education (SCOPE), which works on social and eco nomic justice issues. This op-ed first appeared in Equal Voice News. 1.000 RIOT IN L.A Police and Motorists Attacks Iftt* A( *' f?l (f - V? %? Hi*1 I