There is an ideal pathway for knocking down a barrier that has kept so many voting-eligible citizens away from the polls: automatic voter registration.
"The bill that the governor is expected to sign into law establishes blatant wealth discrimination in the restoration of rights process. The bill will create two classes of returning citizens… [and] under this bill your ability to pay will govern whether you can participate in democracy.”
“If you compare this to some of the other gifts given in higher education, it’s incredibly stark, and I would hope points us to a smarter, better model of philanthropy where people’s lives are genuinely being transformed.”
“Your income or your family’s wealth is extremely predictive of whether you’re going to go college at all and certainly what program you’re going to do."
“Not only are students of color more likely to borrow more for a degree, and borrow in higher amounts for the same degree, but they’re more likely to struggle to repay student loans than white students."
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.
“This is a problem that has not gone away but has gotten worse in many communities. It’s enough of a problem that people expect some action on it, and they expect some plan for how to get there.”
"It’s also clear what we must do: restore the race-conscious protections of the Voting Rights Act and enact affirmative measures to expand ballot access across the country."
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.
“There was an assumption that the student debt problem was concentrated among those at for-profit colleges or predatory programs. Or it was seen as a problem with repayment and not necessarily with debt itself. That has shifted over the last couple of years.”
"White families who did not graduate from high school have the same level of wealth as a black family with a college education. All this has led to a system where black families in particular, but also Latinas, have less wealth to face the challenges when it comes to paying off that debt."
"The ability to pay off your loans has everything to do with wages and the ability to gain secure employment, it has everything to do with housing affordability, it has everything to do with child-care costs."