October, 19 2021, 12:31pm EDT
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Common Cause Urges Senators to Vote "Yes" to Begin Debate on the Freedom to Vote Act
WASHINGTON
Common Cause is urging every member of the U.S. Senate to vote to begin debate on the Freedom to Vote Act when the Senate considers the legislation later this week. The letter emphasizes that already this year, 19 states have enacted 33 restrictive voting laws that make it harder for Americans - particularly in Black and Brown communities - to have a say in choosing their elected leaders. The letter also notes that Common Cause plans to key-vote this legislation in our Democracy Scorecard, which we send to our 1.5 million members.
"Americans overwhelmingly support the Freedom to Vote Act because they believe that every one of us should have the freedom to vote so that we all have an equal say in the future for our family and community, regardless of our age, our political party, our background, or our zip code," said Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn. "The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has gutted the Voting Rights Act, and a number of states have taken full advantage by erecting barriers to make it harder for many of their residents to vote - particularly in Black and Brown communities. Congress must step in to stop this injustice just as it did to combat the Jim Crow laws by passing the original Voting Rights Act in 1965. Some states have passed laws to create a new Jim Crow era and this cannot stand."
The letter stresses the need for both the Senate and the House to pass the measure as well as the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Ten current Senate Republicans voted for the reauthorization of the original Voting Rights Act when it passed the Senate 98-0 in 2006. The original Voting Rights Act was extended and amended five times by Congress with strong bipartisan support and each of those five bills was signed into law by a Republican president.
To read the full letter, click here.
To view this release online, click here.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
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'The World Must Not Stay Silent!': Fresh Israeli Bombings Amid Humanitarian Hellscape in Gaza
As the IDF stepped up attacks in Gaza City, one resident said, "We are being starved... with no hope that this war is ever ending."
Jun 27, 2024
Residents of Gaza City's Shujayea neighborhood found themselves on Thursday among the main targets of new Israeli military operations, with thousands of people fleeing as they were "hunted by tanks and planes," as one Palestinian man told Reuters—even as Israel claimed the "intense" phase of the war was over.
Al Jazeera reported that the Israel Defense Forces targeted five residential homes in the Shujayea and Sabra neighborhoods in the early morning hours of Thursday, killing at least five people in the former area and three in the latter.
Evacuation orders from the IDF came about 30 minutes after the shelling began in Shujayea, according to Al Jazeera, with families rushing to move west after receiving text messages and leaflets from the military. The IDF published a map showing that certain blocks of the residential neighborhood were now part of a combat zone where tanks were moving in.
"We were suddenly and intensively bombarded by Israel," one man fleeing the area on foot told Al Jazeera. "We came out and we don't know where to go."
Artillery attacks were also reported in the Zeitoun, Hawa, and Sheikh Ijlin neighborhoods of Gaza City. Shujayea was a key target of the IDF in the first weeks of Israel's bombardment of Gaza last October.
As Israel claims to be drawing down its attacks while rejecting a permanent cease-fire agreement, "the world must not stay silent" about the ongoing assault on Gaza, said researcher and academic Nour Naim.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported Thursday that the people who were killed in Gaza City overnight were among 47 Palestinians killed across the enclave in the past 24 hours. Fifty-two people were reported wounded in the same time period—the latest of dozens each day who are taken to hospitals where doctors struggle to treat people with severely limited supplies due to continued humanitarian aid delays and blockades.
"There are moments when anesthesia is not available, but in order to save the lives of citizens, we resort to amputation, and this causes severe pain for the wounded," a surgeon at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, toldAFP. "Every day, there are attacks that result in amputations of legs or arms for children, adults, and women."
Six people were killed overnight in an Israeli attack in Jabalia, northern Gaza, and an attack on a family home killed one person in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
In southern Gaza, women and children were among those killed in an attack on a school where displaced people have been staying, and Israeli ground forces "systematically demolished residential buildings in the west of the city" of Rafah, Al Jazeera reported.
As the IDF has stepped up attacks in Gaza City and continued its bombardment of other areas across the enclave, doctors, humanitarian workers, and civilians described the realities of daily life in Gaza, where aid blockades and the disruption of sanitation services and water treatment have all contributed to "grim living conditions" and heightened health risks.
Joanne Perry, a doctor working with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), described to the Associated Press living conditions that have caused concern that a cholera outbreak could soon take hold.
"The crowded conditions, the lack of water, the heat, the poor sanitation—these are the preconditions of cholera," Perry told the AP.
Israeli attacks since October have destroyed Gaza's wastewater treatment plants, water desalination plants, sewage pumping facilities, and wells, and have killed government workers who have tried to repair the infrastructure, leading Palestinians to rely on contaminated and "salty" water.
"We found worms in the water. I had been drinking from it," 21-year-old Adel Dalloul told the AP. "It was salty, polluted, and full of germs... I had gastrointestinal problems and diarrhea, and my stomach hurts until this moment."
The World Health Organization has reported 485,000 cases of diarrhea—the third-leading cause of death in young children worldwide—since October, and has warned of at least one outbreak of Hepatitis A, which is spread through the consumption of water and food contaminated with fecal matter.
A mother of six in Khan Younis told Reuters that her family is relying on a charity kitchen's daily visits to their U.N.-run shelter, as 12 million pounds of food aid and other supplies have been held up since June 9, according to U.S. officials.
"If the charity kitchen did not come here for one day, we would wonder about what we will eat that day," Umm Feisal Abu Nqera told Reuters. "We are living the worst days of our lives in terms of famine and deprivation... Today, your son looks at you and you bleed from within, because you cannot provide him with his most basic rights and the simplest needs for his life."
A girl died of malnutrition on Thursday at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, bringing the official death toll from malnutrition and dehydration among children to 31.
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Progressive International Applauds Kenyans for Rising Up to Defeat IMF Austerity Bill
"They refuse to become another laboratory for neoliberalism—impoverished, beaten, or killed for the benefit of foreign corporations and their lackeys in the Kenyan government."
Jun 27, 2024
Progressive International on Thursday applauded the people of Kenya for taking to the streets en masse to defeat an International Monetary Fund-backed legislative package that would have hiked taxes on ordinary citizens as part of an effort to repay the government's powerful creditors.
"Pushed through at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the U.S. State Department, the bill would impose severe austerity measures and crippling taxes on Kenya's working people, who are already strained by Kenya's legacy of colonial underdevelopment," Progressive International said in a statement.
"The Progressive International stands firmly with the people of Kenya," the organization added. "They refuse to become another laboratory for neoliberalism—impoverished, beaten, or killed for the benefit of foreign corporations and their lackeys in the Kenyan government."
The Kenyan government's proposal, welcomed by the IMF as necessary for "debt sustainability," triggered massive youth-led protests in the nation's capital last week as thousands of citizens already immiserated by sky-high living costs flooded the streets to express outrage at the U.N. financial institution and their government for fueling the crisis.
The government crackdown was swift and deadly, with police using tear gas and live ammunition to beat back demonstrators calling for the withdrawal of the proposed bill and the resignation of President William Ruto, who took office in 2022.
Protesters achieved one of their objectives Wednesday when Ruto announced he would not sign the tax legislation, just days after he
ordered the country's military to help suppress the demonstrations.
"Listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this finance bill, I concede, and therefore, I will not sign the 2024 finance bill, and it shall subsequently be withdrawn," Ruto said in an address to the nation, which spends more than a quarter of its revenue on debt interest payments.
"The protesters we have been speaking to are still very angry, still very frustrated, they hold the president responsible for the deaths of those young Kenyans across the country."
As The Associated Pressreported, the withdrawn measure would have "raised taxes and fees on a range of daily items and services, from egg imports to bank transfers."
Kenya's public debt currently stands at $80 billion, around $3.5 billion of which is owed to the IMF—an explicit target of protesters' ire.
"Kenya is not IMF's lab rat," declared one demonstrator's sign.
The IMF said in a brief statement Wednesday that it was "deeply concerned" about the "tragic events" in Kenya and claimed its "main goal in supporting Kenya is to help it overcome the difficult economic challenges it faces and improve its economic prospects and the wellbeing of its people."
“Kenya is not IMF’s lab rat”
“I was in my healing era” pic.twitter.com/xLt2GG51hf
— Larry Madowo (@LarryMadowo) June 20, 2024
As Bloomberg's David Herbling wrote over the weekend, Ruto "has spent his first two years in office ramming through a slew of unpopular taxes—on everything from gasoline to wheelchair tires, bread to sanitary pads—thrilling international investors and the IMF, which has long urged Kenya to double its revenue collections to address its heavy debt burden."
Ruto's withdrawal of the tax-hike bill appeared unlikely to fully quell mass discontent over the president's IMF-aligned economic policies as protests continued on Thursday.
"The protests today are not as big as they were two days ago but they are still no less intense where they are happening," Al Jazeera's Zein Basravi reported from Nairobi. "If President Ruto, protesters say, had signed off on killing the tax bill 72 hours ago, a week ago, these protests might not be happening. But the decision he made, the concession, has come too little too late, and it has not gone far enough, and it has come at the cost of too many young lives."
"The protesters we have been speaking to are still very angry, still very frustrated, they hold the president responsible for the deaths of those young Kenyans across the country, 23 killed," Basravi added. "And they hold Parliament responsible for not standing stronger, standing firmer, against the president as they feel he was overreaching his position."
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said in a statement Wednesday that it is "crucial to recognize that the International Monetary Fund's austerity conditions have contributed to the economic hardships facing Kenyan citizens."
"These measures often disproportionately affect the most vulnerable populations and can exacerbate social unrest," continued Omar, who chairs the U.S.-Africa Policy Working Group. "It is imperative that protesters remain peaceful as they continue to demand change. I stand in solidarity with the people in the wake of both state violence and IMF-imposed austerity measures."
"The Kenyan government must immediately disclose the location and condition of all those who have been taken into custody or disappeared, cease the use of excessive force, respect the right to peacefully protest, and continue to engage in meaningful dialogue to address the legitimate concerns of its citizens," Omar said.
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Mass Disenfranchisement for Felony Convictions Makes US an 'Outlier Nation'
"The right to vote, and the legitimacy of the democratic system in the United States, should not depend on its criminal legal system, which is built upon and perpetuates discrimination," said an advocate with Human Rights Watch.
Jun 27, 2024
The common U.S. practice of stripping the franchise from people with criminal convictions leaves the country "out of step with the rest of the world," according to a report published Thursday by the Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU.
Despite recent progress in some states, the groups estimated that more than 4.4 million U.S. residents were disenfranchised because of a felony conviction as of 2022, and "thousands more eligible voters were unable to cast their ballot because they were in prison."
"The states with the most restrictive disenfranchisement laws are those with the highest percentages of Black and Latinx people," the new report notes. "Eleven U.S. states permanently disenfranchise at least some people with felony convictions for the rest of their lives. Fourteen U.S. states disenfranchise people both for the duration of their prison sentence and, upon their return to the community, during the time they are under parole or felony probation supervision. An additional state, Louisiana, restores voting rights to people on felony probation and parole once they have been out of prison for five years or more."
"Twenty-three states restore voting rights to people when they return to the community from prison," the report adds, "although at least four states that otherwise restore voting rights after a felony conviction permanently disenfranchise residents for certain election practices."
The 55-page analysis places U.S. disenfranchisement laws alongside the practices of 136 other countries with populations over 1.5 million people and concludes that the U.S.—with its "punitive criminal legal system" and high incarceration rates—is an "outlier nation."
"Wide access to voting is a cornerstone of rights-respecting, democratic government."
More than half of the countries examined in the report "never or rarely deny a person's right to vote because of a conviction." When placed among the remaining countries "where laws deny the right in broader sets of circumstances," the report states, "the U.S. is toward the restrictive end of the spectrum and disenfranchises, largely through U.S. state law, a wider swath of people on the whole."
"In five countries—the Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Morocco, and Togo—people whose convictions fall in certain categories are disenfranchised permanently," the report observes. "These five countries are in the same category with the 11 U.S. states that permanently disenfranchise at least some people convicted of felonies."
Alison Leal Parker, deputy U.S. director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that "wide access to voting is a cornerstone of rights-respecting, democratic government, which is why the right to vote is protected in international human rights law and why the U.S. should reform its outlier status on voting rights."
"The right to vote, and the legitimacy of the democratic system in the United States, should not depend on its criminal legal system, which is built upon and perpetuates discrimination," said Parker.
While a number of states have moved in recent years to loosen voting restrictions for people with felony convictions and restore the franchise at the time of a person's release from incarceration, just four U.S. jurisdictions—Vermont, Maine, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.—allow people to vote while they are imprisoned.
Late last year, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) introduced legislation that would guarantee voting rights to incarcerated citizens and end felony disenfranchisement in federal elections. The bill has just five cosponsors in the Senate and 25 in the House, even though polling data has shown a majority of Americans support guaranteeing voting rights to all, including incarcerated people.
The new report calls on the United States to "end felony disenfranchisement and extend voting rights to all otherwise voting-eligible persons without regard to their criminal legal system contact or convictions." It also recommends that the country eliminate all requirements that citizens pay court-related fines before being allowed to vote again—a practice the report calls a "modern-day poll tax."
"In the United States, this policy is rooted in historical practices intended to reduce electoral participation of citizens of color who would otherwise be eligible to vote," the human rights groups wrote.
Jonathan Topaz, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said Thursday that "even as we've seen more U.S. states make progress in expanding rights restoration, there remain substantial challenges to voter access."
"Convoluted rights restoration laws have resulted in voter confusion about eligibility among returning citizens," said Topaz "Additionally, in many states, returning citizens become eligible to vote only upon payment of various legal financial obligations such as fees, costs, fines, and/or restitution, which essentially institutes a pay-to-vote system. These obstacles must be abolished to ensure full civic participation."
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