You Can't Stop This Democracy

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/election04/20369/

 

You Can't Stop This Democracy

 

By Laura Flanders, Air America Radio. Posted November 2, 2004.

 

Will John Ashcroft be able to stop the democracy movement that's

stirring with his powers under Help America Act? Not likely.

 

A new democracy movement is stirring in America and the Bush Cheney

crew are trying to kill it. There's something big going on here and

it's not just about Nov. 2. It's about democracy in America.

 

I said last week, the Good Old Boy Party of the GOP is engaged in a

last-ditch stunt to put Jim Crow America on life support. I take it

back. The party of pre-emptive war is trying to pre-empt democracy not

by hanging on to the old century's ways, but doing the Civil Rights

movement over, and having it turn out different.

 

The Los Angeles Times carried a fascinating report Friday. Bush

administration lawyers are trying to rewrite Civil Rights era justice.

 

In three closely contested states, the administration's lawyers have

argued that only the Justice Department, not voters themselves, have a

right to sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America

Vote Act or HAVA, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed

2000 election.

 

The significance of that? Well imagine the Civil Rights Movement

without Dr. King, without the NAACP, without scores of lawsuits

brought by individuals and groups who went to court to fight

discriminating officials. Since the 1960s, individuals and groups –

not government officials – have driven the enforcement of civil

rights. Indeed government bureaucrats have usually been the problem.

 

The Voting Rights Act was supposed to ensure the enfranchisement of

everybody but it didn't originally include a private right to sue

state officials who discriminated. The Justice Department only backed

the idea of private suits, in a case that finally reached the Supreme

Court in 1969. In their ruling, the justices said " the achievement of

the acts' laudable goals would be severely hampered if each citizen

were required to depend solely on litigation institute at the

discretion of the attorney general. " Good point.

 

Well now, John Ashcroft's lot are trying for a reversal of that

opinion. In legal briefs brought in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the

adminstration's lawyers argue that regardless of anything that

happened in the 1960s, HAVA gives the Attorney General exclusive power

to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. Like the requirement that

states " provide uniform and nondiscriminatory voting systems " and give

provisional ballots to those who say they've registered but whose

names don't appear on the electoral register.

 

The Voting Rights Act is all very well in other words, but thanks to

HAVA it may only be enforceable if John Ashcroft feels like it. The

guy's very inclined to enforce an individual corporation's rights to

cut down Redwoods and drill the Arctic [National Wildlife Refuge] ...

But to protect your vote if you look like a Democrat? I don't think so.

 

At the very same time – and nothing that happens right now is a

coincidence – the Internal Revenue Service is threatening the NAACP.

According to the group's chairman, Julian Bond, an IRS document dated

Oct. 8 says that at the group's annual convention in Philadelphia in

July, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

violated its tax exempt status (part of its ability to raise funds)

because it " distributed statements in opposition of George W. Bush for

the presidency. " The NAACP's incorporated under a section of the tax

code section that prohibits political campaigning.

 

Who held the first hearings in Florida that revealed that even

election officials had been ilegially struck off the electoral rolls?

Who first invited witnesses to testify that there were police

barricades in minority precincts, and old low tech computers that

couldn't connect back with head office, even as there were modern high

tech machines in the wealthy white districts. Who was it that

ultimately took Secretary of State Katherine Harris to court? The

NAACP. The NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights

organization.

 

The NAACP and certain members of the Bush administration go way back.

Where were Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in 1969 for example?

Working for Richard Nixon, in the Office of Economic Opportunity –

trying to turn that Kennedy-era operation around, to use it to police

civil rights and poor people's groups, and work against the gains of

the civil rights movement. They didn't like the majority America then.

They still don't like it.

 

So they're giving us a chance to do the civil rights movement over.

 

So be it. I think it just might be a chance to do it better. The right

to vote has never been a right, remember, it's always been a

privilege, granted to some and denied to many. Typical of them, the

Bush/Cheney team are going way into overreach with their

disenfranchisement, voter challenging and intimidation efforts. Could

Election 2004 be a benchmark when majority America finally gets it?

Democracy for any of us depends on democracy for all of us. It's that

simple.

 

Laura Flanders is author of Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species.