August, 23 2016, 10:30am EDT

Civil and Human Rights Coalition Calls for More International Election Monitors in U.S. Presidential Election
WASHINGTON
In advance of the first presidential election in 50 years without a fully operable Voting Rights Act (VRA), an American civil rights group is urging the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to expand its election monitoring mission in the United States and to target resources to states where voter discrimination and intimidation is most likely.
In a letter sent to the OSCE from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the group explains that, "A confluence of factors has made the right to vote more vulnerable to racial discrimination than at any time in recent history. The need for additional election observers is paramount. The unprecedented weakening of the Voting Rights Act has led to a tidal wave of voter discrimination efforts nationwide and has required the United States to drastically scale back its own election monitoring program. In addition, a leading presidential candidate who has made the demonization of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities a hallmark of his campaign has recently urged supporters to challenge voters at polling sites nationwide."
The OSCE is an international multi-lateral organization that sends election monitors to its participating countries, including the United States. The OSCE has sent observers to every presidential election since 2002 and intends to send 500 observers for 2016.
In addition to expanding its mission, the group is urging the OSCE "to target its resources to states that have adopted discriminatory restrictions or will likely see enhanced voter intimidation efforts, including places like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Texas.
"The right to vote is more vulnerable now than at any time in the past 50 years," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "Additional monitors can never replace what we lost when the VRA was gutted but we have to use every possible means to ensure the integrity of this election isn't compromised by racial discrimination and intimidation. We now have to fight in the courts and at ballot box for every voter and even our nation's best and most well-organized efforts will not meet the demand we're confronted with. Congress needs to restore the VRA immediately."
The letter is copied below.
August 20, 2016
Michael Georg Link, Director
Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights/
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
Warsaw, Poland
Dear Director Link:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an organization committed to ensuring civil rights, including voting rights, for all Americans, we commend the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for observing the 2016 election in the United States, as it has done in the previous three presidential election cycles.
We write now to emphasize that the OSCE's plans to monitor the upcoming U.S. presidential election will be more essential than ever before and to encourage the OSCE to greatly expand its election monitoring mission in the United States for this election.
A confluence of factors has made the right to vote more vulnerable to racial discrimination than at any time in recent history. The need for additional election observers is paramount. The unprecedented weakening of the Voting Rights Act has led to a tidal wave of voter discrimination efforts nationwide and has required the United States to drastically scale back its own election monitoring program. In addition, a leading presidential candidate who has made the demonization of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities a hallmark of his campaign has recently urged supporters to challenge voters at polling sites nationwide.[i]
This will be the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Because of that, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will not be able to send objective election monitors to protect the rights of voters in the vast majority of places that were once covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.[ii] This means that in the states and localities most likely to enact laws and procedures to disenfranchise voters of color, our federal government will be unable to monitor its own election, making your work even more critical.
Election monitoring is an important component of our democratic process and serves as an additional means of protecting the rights of those who are most likely to be disenfranchised and least able to advocate for their right to vote. But the Department of Justice has determined that the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder invalidated the part of the Voting Rights Act that authorized it to send election monitors.
In the 2004 general election, the Department of Justice sent 1,463 federal observers to monitor 55 elections in 30 jurisdictions in 14 different states. Because of the Shelby decision, there will be virtually no election observers deployed in 2016.[iii]
According to a Democracy Journal column by a former Department of Justice official,[iv] "There are countless examples of the federal observer program being used to protect voters from racial discrimination at the polls," including:
- In 2012, federal observers monitoring an election in Shelby County, Alabama--the jurisdiction that sued to be removed from VRA preclearance in Shelby County v. Holder--documented the closing of doors on African-American voters before the voting hours were over, as well as voting officials using racial epithets to describe voters.
- That same year, observers were sent to Alameda and Riverside counties in California to gather information regarding reports of serious failures to provide language assistance to voters who needed it.
- In 2011, a federal court relied on observer reports to conclude that Sandoval County, New Mexico, had effectively disenfranchised members of the Keres tribe.
- In 2010, during the early voting period in Harris County, Texas, federal observers documented intimidation and harassment targeting Latino and African-American voters by an organized, well-funded Texas-based organization with clear partisan electoral goals.
Because of the Shelby decision, none of these instances of voter discrimination would likely be prevented or stopped in 2016.
The 2016 presidential campaign has seen a resurgence of bigoted rhetoric against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, and a former leader of a violent White supremacist hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, is a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Now a presidential candidate -- who has made demonizing minorities a central part of his campaign strategy -- is encouraging his supporters to challenge voters at polls in "certain sections" of Pennsylvania, an apparent reference to 59 mostly African-American precincts.[v] Efforts at voter intimidation stemming back to the mid-1970s resulted in a federal court banning the Republican Party from engaging in challenge and intimidation efforts aimed at voters of color.[vi]
Non-governmental civil rights and voting rights organizations will also monitor the election where possible, but even the most well-funded and well-organized efforts can't replace the loss of federal election observers or combat a nationwide effort to intimidate voters of color. Voters of color need every possible protection available to them to ensure they can register and cast a ballot. Your ability to shine an international spotlight on this situation is an important component of that protection.
A nationwide litigation effort since the Shelby decision has sought to blunt the tidal wave of voter discrimination laws that were enacted by states and cities. Recent court victories turning back a few of these laws have proven that these efforts are widespread, require massive investments of time and money to litigate, and intentionally discriminate against voters of color. It took years of litigation to strike down intentionally discriminatory laws, meaning countless voters have already been denied the right to cast ballots in the 2014 mid-term election and in this year's presidential primaries. And efforts to ensure that local election officials are complying with those court orders is one important aspect of election observation.
But for every discriminatory statewide law that can be litigated for years, there are countless city, county, and school board changes to voting districts, precinct locations, poll hours, early voting, and new barriers to registering and voting that will never be challenged in court.
Accordingly, we urge the OSCE to greatly expand its election monitoring program in the United States and to target its resources to states that have adopted discriminatory restrictions or will likely see enhanced voter intimidation efforts, including places like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Texas.
We welcome the opportunity to work with the OSCE Election Observation Mission and its international monitors to ensure a free and fair election in the United States. We are available to meet with you and your team at your earliest convenience.
Cc:
Katarzyna Jarosiewicz-Wargan, First Deputy Director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
Alexander Shlyk, Head of the Elections Department of ODIHR
Richard Lappin, Deputy Head of the Elections Department of ODIHR
Sincerely,
Wade Henderson, President & CEO
Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice President
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. Through advocacy and outreach to targeted constituencies, The Leadership Conference works toward the goal of a more open and just society - an America as good as its ideals.
(202) 466-3311LATEST NEWS
Senate Budget Chair Rips GOP Deficit Hawks Over Trillions in Tax Cuts for Rich
"If not for the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and then the Trump tax cuts, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio would be declining indefinitely," wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
Dec 08, 2023
The Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee rebuked his Republican colleagues on Thursday for demanding action to reduce the U.S. debt after adding roughly $10 trillion to it with tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was responding to a letter he received earlier this week from Republican members of the budget committee, who criticized the chair for dedicating "significant time and attention to climate issues" while purportedly neglecting "the impending budgetary and fiscal crisis facing our nation."
In a written reply, Whitehouse noted that "if not for the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and then the Trump tax cuts, the U.S. debt-
to-GDP ratio would be declining indefinitely."
The Bush administration's decision to launch the so-called "war on terror"—which received bipartisan support in Congress—also cost the U.S. upwards of $8 trillion, Brown University's Costs of War project has estimated.
Whitehouse described Republicans' proposed solutions, such as their balanced budget plan, as "magical thinking," pointing to the Congressional Budget Office's recent conclusion that the GOP push to balance the federal budget within the next decade would not be possible without cuts to Social Security and Medicare—programs that are currently in the right-wing party's crosshairs.
"That wild notion would zero out all other federal spending and still not completely eliminate the deficit," Whitehouse wrote, observing that the GOP balanced budget plan would require the elimination of Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other critical programs.
"Some billion-dollar corporations pay no income taxes at all. When you are willing to engage seriously with this problem, let me know."
Whitehouse also defended his decision to focus a significant portion of the committee's work on climate, arguing that "the next fiscal emergencies will be climate-related, and similarly disastrous for the federal budget, with cascading economy-wide 'systemic risks.'"
The U.S. has faced at least 23 billion-dollar extreme weather disasters this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee are currently investigating the climate-induced insurance crisis.
"We presented testimony from leading bankers, insurance CEOs, top corporate advisory firms, mortgage lenders, and scientists about these risks; you responded mostly with mockery, climate denial, and fringe witnesses on the fossil fuel payroll," Whitehouse wrote Thursday.
The Democratic senator's exchange with his GOP counterparts came as Republicans and some Democrats are demanding a "fiscal commission" to craft legislative changes to the nation's trust fund programs, which the GOP has characterized as key contributors to the national debt. (Social Security is not a driver of federal deficits.)
Critics warn the fiscal commission would be a Trojan horse for Social Security and Medicare cuts.
Whitehouse and other congressional Democrats have proposed legislation that would extend Social Security's solvency for more than 75 years by raising taxes on the wealthy. Republicans, for their part, have called for raising the retirement age while working to shield rich tax dodgers.
"As we all know, the tax system is corrupted by special interests, and million-dollar earners can pay lower tax rates than plumbers and firefighters," Whitehouse wrote Thursday. "Some billion-dollar corporations pay no income taxes at all. When you are willing to engage seriously with this problem, let me know. There is a revenue side to the deficit problem, and we can correct injustices at the same time."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Staggering' Rise in Reports of Islamophobia During Gaza War
"People and institutions have spent the past two months weaponizing Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias to both justify the ongoing violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights."
Dec 07, 2023
Three university students were shot and wounded in Burlington, Vermont. A New York City food cart vendor was repeatedly harassed by a former U.S. State Department official. A six-year-old boy was stabbed to death in Plainfield Township, Illinois.
Those are just three high-profile examples of what the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States said Thursday is a dramatic surge in Islamophobia across the country since U.S.-backed Israeli forces launched a devastating war on the Gaza Strip two months ago in response to a Hamas-led attack on Israel.
From October 7 to December 2, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national headquarters and chapters received a total of 2,171 requests for help and reports of bias—a 172% increase over a similar two-month period the previous year.
"It's staggering to see this kind of spike in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate in less than two months," said CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor. "Far too many people and institutions have spent the past two months weaponizing Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias to both justify the ongoing violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America."
The incredible bloodshed and destruction in Gaza—with over 17,000 Palestinians dead, about 80% of the 2.3 million residents displaced, and many homes, hospitals, mosques, and schools destroyed—have led to large-scale protests across the United States demanding that the U.S. government stop giving Israel billions of dollars in military aid.
Throughout the war, there has also been a dramatic increase in reports of antisemitism across the United States. There have also been efforts to conflate discrimination against Jews and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government—including congressional legislation. Critics of what many experts around the world are calling Israel's "genocidal" violence in Gaza have faced consequences, from job losses to the suspension of university campus groups promoting Palestinian rights.
As Common Dreamsreported Thursday afternoon, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) announced "an official congressional investigation with the full force of subpoena power" into the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other schools regarding antisemitism on campus and administrators' responses.
CAIR revealed that at its national headquarters, First Amendment issues, or violations of the right to free speech and expression, are the most common cases at nearly 34%, a 63% increase from the first month of the war to the last four weeks. Those reports are followed by problems with employment (22%), hate crimes and hate speech (17%), and education and bullying (14%).
The cases include that of Jana Alwan, a Muslim woman who was riding a train in Washington, D.C. on October 18. According to a letter CAIR sent last month to the Metro Transit Police Department, an unidentified white man flashed a gun and threatened to behead Alwan, who "was wearing a keffiyeh, an identifiable scarf traditionally worn by Palestinian and Arab people."
Earlier this month, the Idara Jaferia Islamic Center in Burtonsville, Maryland, was evacuated because of a bomb threat. CAIR is calling on state and local law enforcement to bring hate crime charges against the perpetrator.
"From Burlington to Chicago to D.C. and elsewhere, innocent Americans are suffering the consequences of this wave of bigotry," CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said Thursday. "Until our nation stops the violence IN Gaza and rejects bigotry here in America, we fear that both Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism will continue to spin out of control."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Huge Loss' as Gaza Luminary Refaat Alareer 'Assassinated' by Israel
"Refaat Alareer embraced everything good and pure about Gaza and Palestine," said one friend. "He will not be forgotten and his legacy will live on for many generations to come."
Dec 07, 2023
Human rights defenders around the world expressed anguish and outrage Thursday after Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor who was one of Gaza's most prominent writers and activists, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Shejaiya that also killed his brother, sister, and her four children.
Alareer, 44, was "a beloved professor of world literature, comparative literature, Shakespeare, and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught since 2007," notedLiterary Hub.
According to the publication:
He was the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014). Dr. Alareer was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating "a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause."
Through his popular Twitter account, "Refaat in Gaza," Dr. Alareer documented, and forcefully condemned, the ongoing atrocities committed against his people by Israeli forces, as well as the U.S. administrations that have enabled them.
Alareer's friend and We Are Not Numbers co-founder Ahmed Alnaouqwrote on social media: "[Refaat] authored many books and wrote tens of stories about Gaza. Refaat's assassination is tragic, painful, and outrageous. It is a huge loss."
A groundswell of tributes to Alareer flooded social media following the news of his killing.
Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha said, "Breaking, my heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family minutes ago."
"I don't want to believe this," he added. "We both loved to pick strawberries together. I took this photo of him this summer."
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—Quaker peace group whoseLight In Gaza anthology featured Alareer's work—said in a statement that "Refaat was a friend, a mentor, and a father."
"He built up those around him, helping them envision a different future and encouraging them to speak up for their rights," AFSC added. "His impact will be felt for generations to come."
Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal wrote: "You killed my friend. Someone I kept praying would stay safe. Someone I messaged daily [because] his resilience gave me hope."
"He laughed in the face of the genocidal maniacs every day he stayed alive never allowing them to think he was afraid," she added. "You killed him. You killed Refaat Alareer."
Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein said she is "absolutely sickened by this loss."
"I was just now on his site reading his beautiful poetry," she added. "I feel such shame."
The Chicago-based website The Electronic Intifadasaid on social media it is "devastated by Israel's murder of our dear colleague, friend, and mentor."
"Throughout this genocide, Refaat never stopped writing, supporting his students, and bringing Gaza's voice to the world," the site added. "We will make sure it continues to be heard."
Journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen wrote that "I'm in tears and sick to my stomach as I write this."
"Refaat was a guiding light as I documented life and death for my documentary, Killing Gaza," he continued. "He helped me gain access to elders in his neighborhood who provided testimony of shocking Israeli war crimes."
"Refaat Alareer embraced everything good and pure about Gaza and Palestine," Cohen added. "He will not be forgotten and his legacy will live on for many generations to come."
Last month, Alareer posted one of his poems, "If I Must Die," on social media.
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular