In collaboration with grassroots and faith-based partners working in communities of color, Demos is challenging Florida’s racially discriminatory attack on voting rights in the wake of unprecedented turnout by voters of color in the 2020 presidential election.
Taifa Smith Butler, joins News NOW on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day to discuss why Black women in America have to work 579 days to earn what a white man does in one year and how companies can work to combat this pay disparity and inequality.
Although the path forward is still uncertain, one thing is clear: There is momentum around voting rights, and Americans across the country are ready for our elected officials to do everything they can to make it easier — not harder — to vote.
"Central to the work of racial justice is ensuring that Black and brown, our most marginalized communities, our most marginalized residents of this country, have access to the ballot."
Angela joins Moms Rising CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner to talk worker power and a new generation of unions, and why a multiracial democracy is essential for a thriving economy.
Since this country’s founding, Black and brown women have been America’s safety net. Both at home and abroad, our underpaid and unpaid labor are the building blocks that allow America to thrive.
“In their genesis, they’re about preventing Black people in the South from voting. So especially in our pursuit of a multiracial, inclusive democracy, these laws can’t exist.”
“Voting rights is the foundational issue in American politics and American society. Simply put, if we don’t all have an equal say, how can we expect to have an equal chance?”
"State officials are rightly wary of the goals of the commission because it does seem that the whole purpose for setting it up is to justify a preordained conclusion that somehow millions of votes were cast illegally in the last election," says Brenda Wright, vice president for policy and legal strategies at Demos, a progressive think tank. "That's the verdict, and now they want to hold a trial." [...]
Demos (pronounced with long "e") — a public-policy group trying to shape a Democratic agenda on working-class issues like household indebtedness, college affordability and economic challenges facing young people — tested economic messages with an online survey of 1,536 registered voters in June.
To succeed in 2018 and 2020, Democrats need to run campaigns that actually motivate people to get out and vote, especially 20-somethings and struggling people of all races.
That means running unapologetically on the belief that inclusion and diversity is our nation’s strength, that government can and should ensure opportunity and a decent standard of living for its people and that democracy should work for the people, not just the wealthy and corporations.
FESSLER: Brenda Wright is with Demos, a liberal advocacy group. She notes that the main purpose of the motor voter law is to make it easier to register but also harder to remove legitimate voters from the rolls.
WRIGHT: The problems that DOJ should be focusing on are that too few eligible people have access to the vote and are voting. DOJ going after states to force them to do more purging is exactly the opposite of what the department should be doing.