April, 22 2016, 02:30pm EDT
NAACP Statement on Restoring Voting Rights for Ex-Offenders in Virginia
NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks today issued the following statement regarding Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe's executive order restoring voting rights to ex-felons:
"Most former offenders want to be respected as present citizens. The price of citizenship is voting. Governor Terry McAuliffe's executive order enables ex-offenders to pay the price of citizenship - and in so doing, both contribute to our democracy and redeem their dignity. The majority of people with criminal records would much rather be known for their record of voting.
BALTIMORE, MD
NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks today issued the following statement regarding Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe's executive order restoring voting rights to ex-felons:
"Most former offenders want to be respected as present citizens. The price of citizenship is voting. Governor Terry McAuliffe's executive order enables ex-offenders to pay the price of citizenship - and in so doing, both contribute to our democracy and redeem their dignity. The majority of people with criminal records would much rather be known for their record of voting.
"I applaud Governor McAuliffe's courage in using his executive authority to give hundreds of thousands of Virginians an equal voice in the democratic process. Throughout the country, an estimated 5.8 million American citizens are prevented from participating in the voting process. We firmly believe in second chances and that citizens who have completed their sentences be allowed to exercise the constitutional right to vote.
"History shows when people are denied the right to vote, the loss of representation weakens our neighborhoods and communities, and furthers systemic inequality. As some states continue to erect barriers to voter registration, we hope more states follow Governor McAuliffe's lead. Restoring voting rights to incarcerated individuals who have served their time is imperative to a fair and just democracy, while punitive measures only serve to further disenfranchise and isolate ex-offenders."
Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
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Three Years Into Covid Pandemic, World Leaders Say 'Never Again' to Vaccine Apartheid
"These past three years should act as a warning for future pandemics," said former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "We need a return to genuine cooperation between nations in our preparation and response to global threats."
Mar 10, 2023
Around 200 current and former world leaders, Nobel laureates, health and faith leaders, and activists this week marked the third anniversary of the World Health Organization's Covid-19 pandemic declaration by taking aim at the "vaccine apartheid" that according to one advocacy group was responsible for one death every 24 seconds during the outbreak's first year alone.
A letter led by the People's Vaccine Alliance notes that three years have passed since "the World Health Organization (WHO) first characterized Covid-19 as a pandemic" on March 11, 2020 and implores governments to "never again" allow nationalism and capitalist greed to supersede human needs."
"We have seen extraordinary feats of scientific innovation and an enormous mobilization of public resources to develop effective vaccines, tests, and treatments," the letter continues. "But we have also seen a global response held back by profiteering and nationalism."
The signers asserted:
We are hopeful that an end to the acute stage of the Covid-19 pandemic may be in sight. Thus, the world is at a critical juncture. Decisions made now will determine how the world prepares for and responds to future global health crises. World leaders must reflect on mistakes made in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic so that they are never repeated.
There are decades of publicly funded research behind Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests. Governments have poured taxpayer money by the billions into research, development, and advance orders, reducing the risks for pharmaceutical companies. These are the people's vaccines, the people's tests, and the people's treatments. Yet, a handful of pharmaceutical companies has been allowed to exploit these public goods to fuel extraordinary profits, increasing prices in the Global North while refusing to share technology and knowledge with capable researchers and producers in the Global South.
"Instead of rolling out vaccines, tests, and treatments based on need, pharmaceutical companies maximized their profits by selling doses first to the richest countries with the deepest pockets," the letter adds. "Billions of people in low- and middle-income countries, including frontline workers and the clinically vulnerable, were sent to the back of the line."
These inequities, the alliance said, resulted in over 1.3 million preventable deaths—one every 24 seconds—in the pandemic's first year alone. Even today, as the pandemic enters its fourth year, much of the Global South lacks adequate access to Covid-19 testing and treatments.
The letter's signatories urge world leaders to take immediate action to:
- Support a pandemic accord at the WHO that embeds equity and human rights in pandemic preparedness and response;
- Invest in scientific innovation and manufacturing capacity in the Global South through projects like the mRNA Technology Transfer Hub established by the WHO and partners;
- Invest in global common goods; and
- Remove the intellectual property barriers that prevent knowledge and technology sharing.
"In the AIDS pandemic, pharmaceutical monopolies have resulted in an appalling number of unnecessary deaths—and it has been the same story with Covid-19," lamented Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS and co-chair of the People's Vaccine Alliance.
"It was only the production of inexpensive generics in developing countries that made the first generation of HIV medicines available and affordable to people in the [Global] South," she added. "But governments still have not learned that lesson. Unless they break the monopolies that prevent people from accessing medical products, humanity will sleepwalk unprepared into the next pandemic."
East Timorese President José Manuel Ramos-Horta, who also signed the letter, said that "in the Covid-19 pandemic, those of us in low and middle-income countries were pushed to the back of the line for vaccines and denied access to the benefits of new technologies."
"Three years on, we must say 'never again' to this injustice that has undermined the safety of people in every country," he added. "Steps that we take today can hasten global access to vaccines, medicines, and tests in the next pandemic, with regional hubs researching, developing, and manufacturing medical products for everyone, everywhere."
Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asserted:
The great tragedy of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the failure of multilateralism and the absence of solidarity between the Global North and Global South. These past three years should act as a warning for future pandemics. We need a return to genuine cooperation between nations in our preparation and response to global threats. That requires a pandemic accord rooted in equity and human rights, which places the needs of humanity above the commercial interests of a handful of companies.
Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response co-chair Helen Clark—who served as New Zealand's prime minister from 1999 to 2008—noted that "publicly funded science contributed a lot to the phenomenal success of Covid-19 vaccines."
"Yet, that public investment did not lead to vaccines being treated as global common goods," Clark continued. "Rather, nationalism and profiteering around vaccines resulted in a catastrophic moral and public health failure which denied equitable access to all."
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South Carolina Teen Sues School, Teacher Who Shoved Her Over Pledge of Allegiance Refusal
"The thing that's beautiful about America is we have freedoms," said the student's lawyer. "Students in our schools should feel safe."
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Marissa Barnwell, a 15-year-old high school student in Lexington, South Carolina, was joined by her parents and the family's lawyer on Thursday as they spoke publicly about a federal lawsuit they filed against her school district, the state Department of Education, and a teacher who they say assaulted Barnwell late last year for not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Surveillance footage from River Bluff High School shows Barnwell walking through a school hallway on November 29, 2022 when the pledge began playing over a loudspeaker.
A state law passed three decades ago requires public schools to play the Pledge of Allegiance over their intercom systems each day at a specific time, but it prohibits any punishment of people who refuse to recite the pledge as long as "they are not disruptive or do not infringe on others."
Barnwell continued walking and was quickly confronted by a special education teacher, Nicole Livingston, who yelled at her and pushed her against a wall before sending her to the principal's office.
"I was just in disbelief," Barnwell said at the press conference Thursday. "You can hear me say in the video, 'Get your hands off of me.'"
Barnwell's parents learned about the incident when she called them in tears, according to the Associated Press. The school did not talk to them about the alleged assault and has reportedly "never responded" to their requests for an explanation.
"It will not be tolerated, and we will get justice for this action that [Livingston] did," Fynale Barnwell, Marissa's mother, toldNews 19 WLTX, a local CBS affiliate.
The lawsuit was filed last month, with the family arguing Livingston violated Barnwell's "constitutional rights by yelling and demanding that M.B. stop walking and physically assaulting her by pushing M.B., on the wall and forcefully touching M.B., in an unwanted way without her consent."
The Secular Coalition for America applauded the family for taking legal action.
Tyler Bailey, the Barnwells' attorney, said Barnwell was "threatened for exercising [her] constitutional rights."
"The thing that's beautiful about America is we have freedoms," Bailey said Thursday. "Students in our schools should feel safe."
According toThe State, a local newspaper, Livingston is still employed by the school.
"Nobody did anything," Bailey said. "This is why the federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed."
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House Freedom Caucus Economic Hostage-Takers Issue Latest Ransom Demands
"These power-hungry lawmakers are so determined to keep the Biden administration from rebuilding the middle class that they're willing to tank the economy to do it," one advocate warned.
Mar 10, 2023
A cadre of far-right Republicans announced Friday that they may only vote to raise the debt ceiling if Congress agrees to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in social spending, limit federal agencies' future budgets, and abandon progressive elements of President Joe Biden's economic agenda.
Since Washington's arbitrary and arguably unconstitutional borrowing limit was breached in January, the Treasury Department has implemented "extraordinary measures" enabling the U.S. government to meet its obligations for a few additional months. Unless the Biden administration takes unilateral action to disarm the debt ceiling, Congress has until sometime between July and September to increase or suspend the nation's borrowing cap. If Republicans refuse to do so, the U.S. is poised to suffer a catastrophic default.
Led by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), the House Freedom Caucus said Friday in a
statement that its 45 members would "consider voting" to raise the debt limit if their colleagues in the House and Senate agree to:
- Eliminate Biden's $400 billion student debt cancellation plan;
- Rescind unspent Covid-19 relief funds;
- Nix nearly $400 billion worth of clean energy investments approved in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA);
- Repeal the IRA's roughly $80 billion funding boost for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS);
- Restore Clinton-era work requirements on welfare recipients;
- Require congressional approval before any major federal regulations can take effect;
- Cap future federal spending at 2022 levels for the next 10 years; and
- Find "every dollar spent by Democrats that can be reclaimed for the American taxpayer."
Although Capitol Hill's deficit hawks are eager to attack the poor and slash popular programs, they
don't support reducing the ever-expanding U.S. military budget or hiking taxes on corporations and the rich to increase revenue. Rescinding the IRS funding boost, meanwhile, would help wealthy households evade taxes and add an estimated $114 billion to the federal deficit.
"The MAGA extremists running the House fully intend to manufacture a disastrous default crisis by making demands they know to be nonstarters—like letting wealthy tax cheats and big polluters off the hook," Liz Zelnick, director of Economic Security and Corporate Power at Accountable.US, said in a statement.
"These power-hungry lawmakers are so determined to keep the Biden administration from rebuilding the middle class that they're willing to tank the economy to do it," Zelnick continued.
With Republicans possessing a five-seat House majority and the ability of any party member to introduce a motion to remove the House speaker—a new rule the Freedom Caucus secured in exchange for electing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to the role—a few dozen of the GOP's most right-wing members have significant leverage over the fate of the U.S. and world economy.
"They demand sacrifice only from everyday Americans while they insist on preserving or even expanding wasteful tax breaks for billionaires and greedy corporations," said Zelnick. "They're playing a dangerous game of chicken with the economy and the lives of millions of working families."
"The MAGA extremists running the House... demand sacrifice only from everyday Americans while they insist on preserving or even expanding wasteful tax breaks for billionaires and greedy corporations."
A 2011 debt ceiling standoff—when Biden was vice president—enabled congressional Republicans to impose austerity and also resulted in a historic downgrading of the U.S. government's credit rating, but the country has never defaulted on its debt. Economists warned during the last standoff in 2021 that a default would trigger enough chaos in global financial markets to destroy almost six million jobs and roughly $15 trillion in household wealth in the U.S. alone.
Fully aware of the stakes, GOP lawmakers have threatened on multiple occasions over the past few months to unleash economic pain on a mass scale unless they succeed in gutting the relatively underdeveloped U.S. welfare state.
"Speaker McCarthy is not going to cut a deal with Democrats," Perry said Friday at a press conference. "We're not assuming that leadership is opposed to these thing[s]... this is all reasonable stuff."
The latest ultimatum from the Freedom Caucus "appeared to complicate efforts to clinch a deal and avert a looming fiscal calamity," The Washington Post reported.
Biden has repeatedly denounced Republicans for taking the economy hostage in a bid to force through harmful changes, declining to entertain what he calls their "gut punch to the middle class." The president on Friday reiterated his refusal to consider the GOP's proposed cuts, saying, "I don't know [if] there's much to negotiate on."
On Thursday, the White House released its budget request for fiscal year 2024. Notwithstanding Biden's attempt to further increase Pentagon spending, the framework has been hailed by progressives for proposing tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy to expand a range of public goods, including substantial funding for climate action, childcare, education, healthcare, housing, and more.
Although Biden's proposal would reduce the federal deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next decade—the same amount mentioned in the Freedom Caucus' austerity blueprint—Perry said Friday that the White House's progressive tax and investment plan is "not happening."
In an ominous sign, "Republicans readied a bill earlier this week that would prepare the government in the event of a default," the Post reported. "The measure, which the tax-focused Ways and Means Committee sent to the full House, essentially would prioritize some federal payments over others in the event the United States no longer had the authority to borrow."
Notably, this entire episode of fiscal brinkmanship could have been avoided had Democrats listened to Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.) and other progressives who urged the party to raise the debt ceiling—or abolish it altogether—when it still controlled both chambers of Congress last year.
Conservative Democrats refused to act during the lame-duck session despite Warren's warning that GOP lawmakers desperate to win the White House in 2024 will "blow up the economy" and run ads blaming Biden for it.
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