I wish Hosea Williams (colorful local politician and civil rights activist who passed away a few years ago) were still around. He would have let some yahoos have it.





Apparently one racist yahoo was prepared to pull his gun.

Rep. Hank Johnson
U.S. Representative for Georgia's 4th District
Posted: 07/29/2015 12:17 pm EDT
Updated: 07/30/2015 10:59 am EDT

... We cannot allow taking down the flag to distract us from more meaningful reform, such as addressing the resurgence of voter suppression laws and other schemes designed to rig the elections in favor of powerful interests that have arisen following the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder that weakened the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

In their 2013 Shelby decision, the conservative Supreme Court struck a dagger in the heart of the law protected voting rights for decades. Legislating from the bench after ignoring the factual data set out in the legislative history supporting congress' extension of the Voting Rights Act, the Court held 5-4 that the decades-old law used to protect minority voting rights had outlived its usefulness.

The Court ignored the rash of voter suppression laws sweeping across the country. Unnecessary and extremely burdensome voter identification laws passed to fix a non existent problem are the modern means of achieving what poll taxes, literacy tests and blatant discrimination previously accomplished -- the disenfranchisement of African-Americans before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. After the Court seriously weakened the Voting Rights Act, states and local governments are now free to build on existing voter suppression laws and enact unprecedented restrictions on voting rights.

Almost immediately, mostly Southern states previously under the VRA's purview -- began to put up road blocks that make it harder for minorities to vote -- including strict voter ID laws, an end to same day registration and cuts to early voting and weekend voting ...