April 26, 2017
Page 7
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O PINION
Defending Voting Rights across the Nation
A commitment
to equality and
opportunity
M arc h. M orial
A federal court this
month dealt a blow to
Texas’ efforts to disen-
franchise voters of color.
Texas’
draconian
2011 voter identifica-
tion law has now been struck
down for the fifth time. Among
the attorneys representing the
plaintiffs, Texas State Conference
of NAACP Branches and the
Mexican American Legislative
Caucus of the Texas House of
Representatives, are the Lawyers’
Committee for Civil Rights Un-
der Law and the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund, who have worked
tirelessly to defend voting rights
across the nation.
The U. S. District Court for
by
the Southern District of Texas
determined the law intentionally
discriminates against black and
Latino voters. The determination
raises the possibility that
Texas voting procedures
could be placed under fed-
eral supervision, as it was
from the 1965 passage of
the Voting Rights Act un-
til the Supreme Court’s
disastrous 2013 gutting of
the Act with its Shelby v.
Holder decision.
The court found that when the
Texas legislature considered the
bill, the lawmakers were aware
that only two people, out of 20
million votes cast in the previ-
ous decade, had been convicted
of in-person voter fraud. Other,
more common forms of voter
fraud were not addressed by the
bill.
The law was easily the most
restrictive in the nation with re-
spect to permitted identification.
A Texas state handgun license –
which may be legally obtained
by some non-U.S. citizens -- is a
permissible form of identification
under the law, while a federal or
state government ID, nor a stu-
dent ID, are not.
The recent ruling was the sec-
ond time Judge Nelva Gonzales
Ramos had ruled on the law. At
the 2014 trial, experts testified to
Texas shameful history of sup-
pressing minority voters, from
reconstruction up to the present
day. Between 1895 and 1944,
Texas permitted all-white prima-
ry elections. From 1905 to 1970,
Texas voters were prohibited
from taking people with them to
the polls to assist them in read-
ing and interpreting the ballot.
Between 1902 and 1966, Texas
required a poll tax.
And even though the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 put Texas’
voting procedures under federal
preclearance, Texas continued
discriminatory practices. When
the voting age was lowered to 18
in 1971, Waller County – home
to historically black Prairie View
A&M University – prohibited
students from voting unless they
or their families owned proper-
ty in the county. A court struck
down the requirement in 1979,
but Waller County continued at-
tempting to enforce the law as
recently as 2003.
Waller County violated the
preclearance requirement during
Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign
for President, improperly reject-
ing voter registrations and plac-
ing limits on the number of new
registrations. The witnesses also
noted that in every redistricting
cycle since 1970, Texas has been
found to have violated the Voting
Rights Act with racially gerry-
mandered districts.
“Minorities continue to have
to overcome fear and intimida-
tion when they vote,” Judge Ra-
mos wrote in her 2014 decision.
“Reverend Johnson testified that
there are still Anglos at the polls
who demand that minority vot-
ers identify themselves, telling
them that if they have ever gone
to jail, they will go to prison if
they vote. Additionally, there are
poll watchers who dress in law
enforcement-style clothing for an
intimidating effect.”
While we join other civ-
il rights groups in celebrating
the court’s decision, Texas per-
sistence in continuing its long
history of racial discrimination
against voters is disheartening.
We call on Texas’ leadership to
heed the blindingly clear mes-
sage that voter suppression is
unacceptable in 21st Century
America, and move forward with
a commitment to equality and
opportunity.
Marc H. Morial is president
and chief executive officer of the
National Urban League.
Congrats, Graduates! Here’s Your Diploma and Debt
It doesn’t have
to be this way
c huck c ollins
It’s that time of year
again. Flowers are flow-
ering, spring is spring-
ing, and across the
country college gradu-
ates are graduating with
their newly awarded de-
grees held high.
Also high is the mountain of
student debt most of these recent
graduates are taking on. All told,
44 million Americans now owe
student debt — including 7 in 10
graduating seniors last year, who
owe an average of $37,000.
If you’re not one of those
tens of millions of people, you
might’ve missed how out of con-
trol student debt has become.
Total student debt is approach-
ing $1.4 trillion, surpassing auto
loans and credit card debt.
Between job searches and
by
apartment hunting, post-gradu-
ate life is already stressful — and
student debt makes it worse. The
average monthly payment for
borrowers in their 20s is
$351.
If you’re making
minimum wage, that’s
48 hours of work for
your loans alone —
never mind shelter and
food. No wonder more
than 4 in 10 have either
stopped making payments or fall-
en behind.
There is nothing positive about
student debt.
Many indebted graduates be-
gin their work lives with dam-
aged credit histories and greater
economic vulnerability. They’re
less able to start a business or
work in public service. And they
delay starting families and buy-
ing houses, which makes them
less wealthy in the long run.
The only winners are the pred-
atory loan servicing agencies.
One reason for the explosion
of student debt is that states and
the federal government have
drastically cut education spend-
ing, forcing students and parents
to pick up the costs. Public col-
lege spending is still $10 billion
below pre-recession levels.
To make things worse, Trump’s
secretary of education, billionaire
Betsy DeVos, is reversing protec-
tions put in place by the Obama
administration to protect student
loan borrowers by regulating loan
servicing companies and capping
interest rates at 16 percent (at a
time when bank loan rates are be-
low 6 percent).
It shouldn’t be this way. And it
doesn’t have to be.
Ask the millions of people who
attended college between 1945
and 1975 and graduated with lit-
tle or no debt. Millions of baby
boomers paid tuition at the great
flagship universities of this land
just by working summer jobs.
That wasn’t on a different planet
Letter to the Editor
Not My Priorities
Republicans are against increasing the mini-
mum wage, the working class, the middle class,
women, funding K-16 education; social security,
seniors, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, universal
health care, voter rights, endangered species, re-
newable energy, and global warming. In addition,
they call the media “the enemy of the people.”
Republicans are pro gun, torture, more nuclear
weapons, big oil, cigarette manufacturers, all corpo-
rations, Russia, non-taxed foreign bank accounts, the
top one-percent, building a border wall of over 1,000
miles, and billionaires.
Jeff Avis
Southwest Portland
— it was mere decades ago.
Some places are experiment-
ing with new models. At the city
level, San Francisco has taken
the lead by creating a free tuition
program for anyone who’s lived
in the city for at least a year, re-
gardless of income. It’s funded
by a voter-approved tax on prop-
erties worth over $5 million.
At the national level, Sen.
Bernie Sanders and Rep. Prami-
la Jayapal recently introduced
the College for All Act, a plan
Sanders got into the Democratic
platform last summer. It would
eliminate tuition and fees at pub-
lic universities for those with in-
comes under $125,000 — all paid
for by a small sales tax on Wall
Street trades.
These ideas could mean a
brighter future for students to
come. But what about for those
already crushed by debt?
For them, there’s a silver lin-
ing. When you owe $50,000, the
bank owns you. But when the
bank’s trying to bleed you for
$1.4 trillion, you own the bank.
It’s time for the 44 million stu-
dent debt households to flex our
muscles and demand change.
Chuck Collins is a senior
scholar at the Institute for Poli-
cy Studies and a co-editor of In-
equality.org. He’s the author of
the recent book Born on Third
Base. Distributed by OtherWords.
org.
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