NAACP goes to UN for help to protect minorities from the "most vicious, co-ordinated and sinister attack to narrow participation in our democracy since the early 20th century".

Courtesy of the Guardian:

The largest civil rights group in America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is petitioning the UN over what it sees as a concerted efforted to disenfranchise black and Latino voters ahead of next year's presidential election. 

The organisation will this week present evidence to the UN high commissioner on human rights of what it contends is a conscious attempt to "block the vote" on the part of state legislatures across the US. Next March the NAACP will send a delegation of legal experts to Geneva to enlist the support of the UN human rights council. 

The NAACP contends that America is in the throes of a consciously conceived and orchestrated move to strip black and other ethnic minority groups of the right to vote. William Barber, a member of the association's national board, said it was the "most vicious, co-ordinated and sinister attack to narrow participation in our democracy since the early 20th century". 

In its report, Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, the NAACP explores the voter supression measures taking place particularly in southern and western states. 

Fourteen states have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular. 

The new measures are focused – not coincidentally, the association insists – in states with the fastest growing black populations (Florida, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina) and Latino populations (South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee). The NAACP sees this as a cynical backlash to a surge in ethnic minority voting evident in 2008. 

In that year, black and Hispanic voters turned out in record numbers, partly in a wave of enthusiasm for Barack Obama. More than 2 million extra black voters turned out over 2004, an increase of 15%.

Whenever people start telling me that I am too hard on Republicans, or that my differences with them are only ideological and essentially ALL political parties want what is best for the country, it is THIS kind of egregious attacks on our fundamental freedoms which easily refute that argument.

In the last thirty years I have become more and more convinced that the Republicans are like the fighter who puts chloroform in his glove before entering the boxing match,  Or dopes up before the big race.  Or has somebody else take the SAT's for him so that he can brag about his score of 2,100.

I don't mind losing a contest where both of us stand toe to toe, trading blows until one of us crumples. Even if my opponent is bigger and stronger, at least I know what I am getting into when I face off against them.

What I cannot stand is the coward who marks the cards before playing poker, or cuts your brake lines before the starting pistol fires, out of fear they cannot emerge victorious from a fair contest. These people have won nothing, and yet they collect the prize at the end, and act for all the world as if they deserve to be in the winner's circle.

This has been the attitude of the Republicans for many years now. From using Diebold machines to steal votes, to challenging every dangling chad until the Supreme Court that they stacked in their favor could decide the election in their favor, to this attack on the rights of minorities (A large percentage of Democratic votes) by making it MUCH harder for them to exercise their rights as Americans. THIS has been how the GOP has conducted politics in this country for far, far too long.

The fact that Americans have to ask for help from the United Nations to protect voting rights in this country, a country renowned for its freedom, is perhaps the saddest indictment of what the Republicans have done to this nation that I could imagine.

Today I shed a tear for the loss of what once defined us as a country.

What is it that a certain, now nearly forgotten, political figure once said? "Do you love your freedom?

Yes, yes we do. So why don't you and your cohorts stop trying to take it away from us?