Never Forget the People Who Died
Voting Rights Act

Beginning in the 1950s, I watched much painful footage, such as that of police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham. From cameras in Mississippi during Freedom Summer came horrifying film of an all-out war on civil rights workers. In a three month period they faced 1000 arrests, 80 beatings, 30 bombings, 35 shooting incidents, and at least 6 murders. Then came the spectacle from the Edmund Pettis Bridge in 1965, where mounted local and state police attacked peaceful protesters with gas canisters and batons. More deaths there inspired the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

For twenty-five years, I rewatched the horrific footage of those bloody battles at least twice a year, as I taught a graduate seminar on the civil rights movement. I am emotionally invested in this piece of legislation. It scares me that few people today realize how much blood was spilled for the simple right to vote. The Bush Justice Deportment's refusal to even consider the opinions of staff lawyers in the recent cases of the Texas redistricting and Georgia voter IDs is loathsome. Thus I'm somewhat relieved that a backlash has begun. See DOJ Staff Opinions Banned in the WP:

For decades, staff attorneys have made recommendations in Section 5 cases that have carried great weight within the department and that have been passed along to senior officials who make a final determination, former and current employees say.

Preventing staff members from making such recommendations is a significant departure and runs the risk of making the process appear more political, experts said.

"It's an attempt by the political hierarchy to insulate themselves from any accountability by essentially leaving it up to a chief, who's there at their whim," said Jon Greenbaum, who worked in the voting section from 1997 to 2003, and who is now director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "To me, it shows a fear of dealing with the legal issues in these cases."

Many congressional Democrats have sharply criticized the Civil Rights Division's performance, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said this week that he is considering holding hearings on the Texas redistricting case. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in a statement yesterday: "America deserves better than a Civil Rights Division that puts the political agenda of those in power over the interests of the people its serves."