Author: Henry Taylor

Selected Media

The States Where Efforts To Restrict Voting Are Escalating

By Alex Samuels, Elena Mejía, and Nathaniel Rakich

Read the full article from FiveThirtyEight, here.

But the push to restrict voting rights expands beyond just a few states. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights advocacy group, 253 bills to restrict voting access had been introduced in 43 state legislatures as of Feb. 19. And according to our own tracking, at least 53 additional bills have been introduced since then. 1 Of these 306 bills, 89 percent were sponsored entirely or primarily by Republicans, according to the bill-tracking service LegiScan.

Selected Media

Robin D.G. Kelley: Amazon Union Drive Builds on Decades of Black Radical Labor Activism in Alabama

From Democracy Now!

Watch the full interview from Democracy Now! here.

“I want to really emphasize that what makes the history of Alabama unionization important was the role of the left. You know, the fact is, the reason why we have anti-labor legislation, we have violence against labor in Alabama, what appears to be conservatives, the reason we have Jim Crow and the disenfranchisement of Black people, the most draconian anti-immigration laws, is precisely because those who rule the South know the potential of an interracial labor movement, because they’ve seen it.”

Selected Media

Democrats assail Georgia law, make case for voting overhaul

By Steve Peoples & Lisa Mascaro

Read the full article from ABC News, here.

Democrats on Friday seized on new voting restrictions in Georgia to focus attention on the fight to overhaul federal election laws, setting up a slow-building standoff that carries echoes of the civil rights battles of a half-century ago.

Selected Media

Jim Crow Redux: Georgia GOP Governor Signs “Egregious” Voter Suppression Law Targeting Black Voters

By Anoa Changa

Read the full article from Democracy Now, here.

Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp has signed a sweeping elections bill that civil rights groups are blasting as the worst voter suppression legislation since the Jim Crow era. The bill grants broad power to state officials to take control of election management from local and county election boards. It also adds new voter ID requirements, severely limits mail-in ballot drop boxes, rejects ballots cast in the wrong precinct and allows conservative activists to challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters. Since the 2020 election, Republican state lawmakers have introduced over 250 bills in 43 states to limit voter access. The elections bill is “extremely egregious” in its restriction of voting rights, says journalist Anoa Changa. “They’re continuing to put processes in place that reinforce these narratives that … have long existed within the Republican toolkit to help get their base fearful in terms of what might come in terms of Black voters and other voters of color.”

Selected Media

The Diversity and Inclusion Industry Has Lost Its Way

By Kim Tran

Read the full article from Harper’s Bazaar here.

“The people who populate DEI are who theorists call the national bourgeoisie, an entrepreneurial class of people of color interested in economic development (and personal enrichment) instead of liberation. Frantz Fanon said that the purview of the national bourgeoisie was “not to transform the nation but prosaically serve as a conveyor belt for capitalism.” The diversity, equity, and inclusion industry is distressingly close to getting caught in the assembly line of its own making, but another word for crossroads is choice.”

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Campaigns target Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy among Blacks, but access remains an issue

By Deidre Williams

Read the full article from The Buffalo News here.

“In Buffalo, predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods such as the East Side’s 14215 ZIP code and 14201 on the Lower West Side have higher infection rates. They were among 10 Buffalo ZIP codes initially targeted for mass vaccination at the Delavan Grider Community Center to reach traditionally underserved neighborhoods with higher infection rates and more hesitancy about the vaccine.”

Uncategorized

Need Amid Plenty: Richest U.S. Counties Are Overwhelmed by Surge in Child Hunger

By Laura Ungar

Read the full article from Route Fifty, here.

Data from the anti-hunger advocacy group Feeding America and the U.S. Census Bureau shows that counties seeing the largest estimated increases in child food insecurity in 2020 compared with 2018 generally have much higher median household incomes than counties with the smallest increases. In Bergen, where the median household income is $101,144, child hunger is estimated to have risen by 136%, compared with 47% nationally.

Uncategorized

Evanston is the first U.S. city to issue slavery reparations. Experts say it’s a noble start

By Char Adams

Read the full article from NBC News, here.

The historic plan by Evanston, Illinois, to make reparations to its Black residents — including housing grants for a fraction of the city’s families — has prompted questions about whether funding such programs, as opposed to direct payments, can be considered reparations for slavery and racial discrimination at all. The first phase involves giving 16 residents $25,000 each, for home repairs or property costs. This plan, however, is far from the direct payments that have come to characterize reparations — redress for slavery and the subsequent racial discrimination in the United States. But experts say Evanston’s plan is a noble start to a complicated process.

Selected Media

The Amazon Union Drive and the Changing Politics of Labor

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Read the full article from The Atlantic here.

“Amazon’s influence is so vast—touching on issues from wealth and income inequality to antitrust policy, the American relationship with China, the omnipotence of workplace surveillance, and the atomizing effect of big business, in its most concentrated and powerful form, on families and communities—that it can scramble ordinary politics…The fight in Bessemer is different because it is so direct. Amazon isn’t a proxy for the future of the economy but its heart.”

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