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Richard Barone presents MUSIC + REVOLUTION, (It Could Always Happen Again)
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,759
I really, really love what Richard Barone has been up to these days (and I'm a big and long time fan). I'm posting this in AMT rather than Other Music because a) in this situation, the music is about movement, and b) because this kind of movement to make music relevant in a time of dire situations is so over-due, and c) (a rather selfish reason), because I have been desperate for something brimming with hope rather than hearing and reading the endless litany of despair that defines so much of our time.
Please check out the link. I think many here will find this worth the few minutes to read:
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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"Look what we made happen," the Los Angeles Lakers star says in the ad, as images flash of demonstrations protesting the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor last year. "What our voices made possible.
"And now look what they're trying to do to silence us. Using every trick in the book."
The non-partisan group is among several pushing back against efforts by majority-Republican legislatures across the country to restrict voting access after former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the November election.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/30/us/michael-jordan-voter-suppression-trnd/index.html
Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand are donating $2.5 million toward fighting Black voter suppression.
One million dollars is being donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. and $1 million to the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People and Families Movement. The Black Voters Matter organization will receive $500,000, according to a statement by the Jordan Brand.
The commitment is part of a $100 million, 10-year pledge that Jordan and the Jordan Brand announced on June 5 to “impact the fight against systemic racism.” The pledge focuses on three areas: social justice, economic justice, and education and awareness.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
And could you be more racist?
The dude obviously knows nothing about you, bud, pay him no heed! We know you're good!
here's a PSA Narrated by LeBron James:
Click for the whole article
https://www.si.com/nba/lakers/news/lebron-james-launches-website-for-more-than-a-vote-to-help-end-black-voter-suppression
LeBron James Launches Website For More Than A Vote To Help End Black Voter Suppression
So in addition to denouncing racial injustice on his massive platform of a combined 112 million followers on Twitter and Instagram, James helped found a nonprofit group named More Than A Vote to fight black voter suppression and excite minority voters across the nation.
"To my brothers and sisters in sports and arts," James tweeted Wednesday. "We have incredible influence in our community. We need to use this moment to demand change. I gotta be honest…I struggle with what to demand because so damn much needs to change. But I’m starting with our right to vote."
Opinion Step by step, conservative judges are gutting the Voting Rights Act
A right without a remedy is worse than useless — it is a cruel mirage. And that is what conservatives want to do to the Voting Rights Act: Turn it into an illusion.
A new decision by a federal appeals court could accomplish that mission — and poses a stark test for the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Will it be activist in pursuit of its ideology, or will it respect decades of practice and precedent?
The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, and throughout the subsequent decades, the universal assumption has been that private parties — voters who claim their rights were infringed, or interest groups representing them — could go to court to invoke the law’s protections. Lawmakers, litigants and judges have taken it as a given that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act allows for lawsuits by private parties alongside enforcement by the Justice Department.
But then, in 2021, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority radically rewrote Section 2, inventing new limits that made it harder to win cases brought under that provision, which prohibits any “standard, practice, or procedure” that makes it disproportionately harder for minority citizens to vote. That wasn’t enough for Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who seized the opportunity to offer a concurring opinion that all but invited states and other defendants in Voting Rights Act cases to challenge the validity of private suits.
The concurrence, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, was a dishonest piece of work crammed into a single paragraph. Backing its claim that “lower courts have treated this as an open question,” it cited a single appeals court case that merely mentioned the issue in passing. That ruling was from 1981, the yearbefore Congress rewrote the law to strengthen Section 2, and in doing so made clear that the section was meant to allow private lawsuits. “It is intended that citizens have a private cause of action to enforce their rights under Section 2,” the House report on the law stated.
The concurrence had its intended effect. The following February, a Trump-appointed district court judge in Arkansas, Lee Rudofsky, brought up the question of the right of private parties to sue in a state case in which the plaintiffs hadn’t even raised the issue. That didn’t stop Rudofsky from asserting that he was compelled to toss the suit.
Last week, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit agreed. The “text and structure” of Section 2 showed that Congress did not give private plaintiffs the right to sue, said Judge David Stras, another Trump appointee, joined by George W. Bush nominee Raymond Gruender. “For much of the last half-century, courts have assumed that [Section 2] is privately enforceable. A deeper look has revealed that this assumption rests on flimsy footing,” Stras wrote.
Case closed. Lawsuit dismissed. Rights deleted.
The dissenting opinion, by George W. Bush appointee Lavenski Smith, explains what a dramatic departure this is — and what a breathtaking act of judicial chutzpah. The Supreme Court hasn’t directly addressed the question, Smith noted, but it has repeatedly considered Section 2 cases involving private parties, including a ruling earlier this year in an Alabama redistricting case. The Supreme Court has held that other sections of the Voting Rights Act allow private lawsuits; in a 1996 case, it said a private right under Section 2 “has been clearly intended by Congress” since the Voting Rights Act was passed.
“Until the Court rules or Congress amends the statute, I would follow existing precedent that permits citizens to seek a judicial remedy,” Smith wrote in his dissent. “Rights so foundational to self-government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the government’s agents for protection.”
Indeed. Voting cases are complex and time-intensive. There’s only so much the Justice Department can do — even in administrations that are inclined to enforce the law. Smith noted that of at least 182 successful Section 2 cases in the past 40 years, only 15 were brought solely by the attorney general.
Which is, of course, precisely the point. A friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Honest Elections Project, a creation of Federalist Society field marshal Leonard Leo, argues that such a restriction “furthers important public policy interests” because the law has been increasingly “misused by private plaintiffs” and — get this — “correlates to a precipitous drop” in public trust in election results.
Talk about blaming the victim.
The appeals court is correct that Section 2 doesn’t explicitly contain a private right to sue. In recent years, the court has been reluctant to discern such authority unless it is clearly set out, and it has increasingly shied away from relying on legislative history. If the courts were dealing with a newly minted statute, that would be one thing.
But nearly six decades on, with a settled interpretation of the Voting Rights act that has permitted private lawsuits, changing the rules is a different matter entirely. How was the Congress that passed — and revised — the Voting Rights Act supposed to have read the minds of a future court?
Law works only in a system of predictable rules. The alternative is instability and chaos. Under this court, constitutional rights exist, until — about half a century on — they don’t. A law carries with it the right to sue, until, perhaps, it doesn’t. And spare me, please, the lectures about the primacy of text. A court that literally wrote new restrictions into Section 2 has no standing on that subject.
The justices are going to have to decide this question. It is of surpassing importance, and conflicts with a decision earlier this month by the ultraconservative 5th Circuit, which managed to get this one right. How the issue is resolved will not only shape the future of voting rights. It will reveal much about this conservative majority’s appetite for wreaking legal havoc under the convenient guise of textualism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/28/voting-rights-act-private-lawsuits/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Why are you posting this here?
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
There have been a number of posts that don't have anything to do with this thread. They all need to be nipped, bud.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Folk music exploded in the 50's through early 60's, but it has been around for centuries. It will rise again, even as we dinosaurs fade away.