A report on the ability of local communities to decide, based on their own form of local government, how they may enact policies to protect immigrant rights.
In 2010 and 2011, Maryland and New York took bold steps to correct the problem known as prison gerrymandering, a problem resulting from the United States Census Bureau’s practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prison cells rather than their home communities.
The Bill of Rights has been a central touchstone for Americans throughout history, especially when faced with existential challenges to the legitimacy of American government.
If included, analysts predict the question would effectively deter 6.5 million people – overwhelmingly from historically undercounted communities – from participating in the 2020 Census.
The counter to this neoliberal vision involves, then, a more thorough moral critique—and a more transformative policy agenda—that tackles the underlying forces of corporate power, market inequities, structural racism, and anti-democratic political institutions. That progressives are finally talking in these expansive terms represents a potentially transformative inflection point in American politics.
Today’s Supreme Court decision that federal courts have no ability to check extreme partisan gerrymandering is a stunning blow to our democracy. This decision represents an abdication of judicial responsibility to protect against constitutional violations.
The crisis of American democracy is a deeper, more chronic one arising from systemic racial and gender exclusion, entrenched economic inequality, and technological and ecological transformations that undermine dreams of collective action and inclusive shared self-governance.
On this Haitian Independence Day, the world must recognize Haiti and her people not only for their struggle, but also for their ingenuity, their resolve and their courage.