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Security

Conservatives Panic Over ‘U.N.-Affiliated’ Election Monitors

By Hayes Brown on Oct 23, 2012 at 3:45 pm

Polling board members in Arlington, Virginia, demonstrate touch screen voting machines to OSCE observers in 2004

Conservative blogs and news media are all buzzing about a team of international election monitors coming to observe the presidential elections in November. The observers are arriving at the invitation of the State Department and the behest of a number of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, ACLU, and others.

The latter groups’ call for an international team to keep an eye on the U.S. elections focuses particularly on states that have enacted strict voter I.D. laws and other curtailing of voting rights. An NAACP delegation visited the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland in September to bring attention to the issue. The NAACP’s move, and the idea of foreign presence in the U.S. to observe elections, has infuriated many on the right.

The response at the state-level is varying. Alabama Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard is, in protest of the monitors’ presence preparing legislation to have all poll watchers in Alabama hold U.S. citizenship. “It’s bad enough that Alabama remains trapped under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act,” Hubbard said “So we certainly don’t need anyone from the United Nations coming into our state and meddling in our elections, as well.”

Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote appeared on Fox News on Monday claiming that the monitors’ presence was actually intended to prevent and discourage U.S. voters from exercising their rights. Fox’s Megyn Kelly readily agreed, stressing the left-leaning nature of the civil rights groups, seemingly unaware of the State Department’s role in inviting the monitors. It’s worth mentioning that True the Vote, itself a Tea Party group voter suppression effort, is currently under investigation for possible criminal conspiracy. Watch the full interview here:

What none of these commentators mention is that this is neither an unprecedented event nor particularly worrisome. The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) is a group of over fifty countries in North America, Europe, and Central Asia committed to security and strengthening democracy. Counter to many of the exclamatory statements by the right-wing, the OSCE is not a part of the United Nations, but instead is loosely affiliated with the global organization.

According to the 1990 Copenhagen Document, which the U.S. has signed, all member states of the OSCE are called upon to accept monitors to observe their elections. As a founding member, the U.S. has taken part in dozens of observer missions over the years. In allowing observers into the country, the United States is preventing setting a precedent for other, less democratic states, to ban these monitors.
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LGBT

Sally Field, Ben Jealous, And Cory Booker Headline HRC’s Annual National Dinner

By Zack Ford on Oct 9, 2012 at 8:59 am

Sally Field and her son, Sam Greisman.

The Human Rights Campaign held its annual National Dinner Saturday night in Washington, DC, and many prominent speakers were on hand to champion the progress of LGBT equality and reinforce hope for the journey forward.

Actress Sally Field accepted HRC’s Ally for Equality Award, and after her gay son Sam Greisman introduced her, she spoke to the importance of family acceptance:

FIELD: There are so many children who struggle to understand and embrace their sexuality, and families who do not welcome them — with parents who somehow find it acceptable to shut them out of their hearts and their homes. And that I find unacceptable. There comes a time when parents must listen and learn from these people they brought into the world, their children, and these children have something important to teach their parents. I urge them to listen.

HRC’s National Equality Award went to the NAACP, a prominent civil rights organization that endorsed marriage equality. The group’s president, Ben Jealous, emphasized the importance of turning “liberty and justice for all” into a reality:

JEALOUS: As an American people, we celebrate the many times that our nation has led this world away from hate and ever toward hope. In this precipitous moment, when we as a movement are on the brink of massive change and tremendous progress…let us stand up for marriage equality from coast-to-coast and border-to-border!

Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker was the dinner’s headline speaker, and he spoke passionately about the future of civil rights:

BOOKER: I get in weird conversations with my friends. “Why you always talking about gay rights”‘ I said, “I’m not talking about gay rights. I’m talking about human rights. I’m talking about my rights. I’m talking about your rights.” When people were fighting to expand the promise of this country, it took everybody involved, ’cause we knew we were all in it together. That deep and real African proverb was clearly true in our history that says, “If you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together.” And so now, it’s time we go together.

Also on hand were playwright Dustin Lance Black and actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who sang a special song he “learned from Johnny Cash.” Watch videos of all the speeches:

Justice

NAACP Backs Marijuana Legalization In CO, Citing Drug War’s Toll On People Of Color

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Aug 24, 2012 at 2:10 pm

Colorado voters will decide whether to legalize marijuana in their state this fall after supporters turned in twice the number of required signatures to get the issue on the November ballot. That state-level push for marijuana legalization picked up an endorsement from the NAACP yesterday when the local chapter of the organization endorsed Amendment 64 — not because the NAACP necessarily endorses drug use, but because its leaders are concerned about the Drug War’s disproportionately negative impact on the African-American community.

In a press statement on the issue, the NAACP reported that even though African-Americans made up just about 4 percent of the state’s population in 2010, they accounted for 9 percent of marijuana possession arrests and 22 percent of arrests for marijuana distribution. And those numbers jump even further in the Denver area, according to a report from the city’s police department. African-Americans made up more than 31.5 percent of all arrests for adult marijuana possession, even though they represent less than 11 percent of Denver’s overall population.

Rosemary Harris Lytle, the president of the NAACP-Colorado-Montana-Wyoming State Conference, explained:

Marijuana prohibition policy does more harm to our communities than good. That is why we have endorsed Amendment 64, which presents a more effective and socially responsible approach to how Colorado addresses the adult use of marijuana.

At a press conference announcing the endorsement, Harris Lytle pointed out that decriminalizing the adult use of marijuana could help to reduce the unjust mass incarceration of the black community.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D-NJ) — whose home state of New Jersey has legalized cannabis for medical purposes — has made similar statements about the Drug War’s disproportionate impact on African-Americans and the U.S.’s failed drug policies. Booker has pointed to the same kind of statistics about swelling rates of African-American incarceration in New Jersey, saying the situation “anguishes” him.

Justice

Meet The Florida Man Who Was Threatened With Prosecution For Registering Voters

By Scott Keyes and Judd Legum on Jul 13, 2012 at 1:30 pm

HOUSTON, Texas — All Sabu Williams wanted to do on Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend was register voters.

One can imagine his surprise, then, when soon thereafter he received a letter from the state supervisor of elections threatening him with prosecution.

The letter claimed Williams, president of the Okaloosa County NAACP, had run afoul of Florida’s new voter suppression law, which was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature last year. The law cut the state’s early voting period in half and enacted a host of new requirements on voter registration groups, including that they must turn in completed forms within 48 hours exactly or face a fine. (The 48-hour rule has since been blocked by a federal judge.)

After the rule was first put in place, the NAACP was the only group in Okaloosa County that braved the new pitfalls and continued to register voters. However, when they registered voters over MLK weekend, they were charged with submitting the forms an hour late on Tuesday, despite the fact that they were unable to submit forms on Monday because it was a holiday.

“We’re here the very first day that you’re open at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and you’re saying that we’re an hour late?” Williams asked. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He soon received a letter from the state supervisor of elections. “We appreciate you going out and registering voters,” the letter read. “However, you were late for two of those and if you’re late anymore we’re going to turn this over to the Florida Department of Justice for prosecution.”

Watch highlights from his interview with ThinkProgress:

NEWS FLASH

Rush Limbaugh: NAACP Booed Romney Because He Is White | On his radio show on Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh opined that President Obama skipped the NAACP convention because he feared tough private meetings with the group’s leadership and because “He’s confident they’ll boo Romney, simply ’cause Romney’s white. He’s confident of that.” As Mother Jones notes, many white candidates and leaders, including Vice President Joe Biden, have spoken to the group in the past, without incident.

Election

Romney On NAACP Booers: They’re Freeloaders

By Aviva Shen on Jul 12, 2012 at 9:29 am

Mitt Romney has found a new spin for the resounding chorus of boos he triggered at the NAACP on Wednesday. At a fundraiser in Montana that night, Romney boasted about the boos to a very different crowd, saying: “If they want more stuff from the government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.”

Given Romney’s fraught history with the organization — Mother Jones reported yesterday on his antagonistic relationship with the Boston NAACP while governor — invoking the “welfare queen” stereotype against NAACP members who support Obamacare is tone deaf, if not a deliberate attempt to stoke conservative resentment against so-called government freeloaders.

The “free stuff” comment is a mantra Romney uses often. Just last month, in a speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), Romney scoffed, “Everybody likes free stuff, but there is no free stuff.”

The Rachel Maddow Blog cites several more examples:

A few months ago, for example, the GOP presidential hopeful responded to questions about contraception access by saying, “If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy.” Soon after, Romney complained that Obama is trying to buy students’ political support by offering them “free stuff.”

There is a pattern to this. If you’re a woman who wants access to preventive care you might not otherwise be able to afford, Romney sees you as wanting “free stuff.” If you’re a young student who can’t afford higher-ed tuition, Romney assumes you expect “free stuff.”

And if you’re an African American supporter of the NAACP who wants your family to have access to affordable health care, Romney suspects you’re just looking for “free stuff.”

Of course, no one will receive free health insurance under Obamacare; the law makes health care more affordable for working and middle class families through tax credits. But everyone pays into the system to ensure that the government does not have to pick up the tab of the uninsured.

LGBT

VIDEO: Two African American Church Leaders Explain Why They Support Marriage Equality

By Scott Keyes and Judd Legum on Jul 12, 2012 at 9:00 am

HOUSTON, Texas — When President Obama announced his support for marriage equality in May, many critics argued that the move was out of step with the African American community.

Even after the NAACP took the same step 10 days later, some still perpetuated the myth that most African Americans, particularly more religious people, opposed marriage equality.

ThinkProgress spoke with two African American church leaders at the annual NAACP conference in Houston about same-sex marriage. Sabu Williams, president of the Okaloosa County (Florida) NAACP and a Baptist deacon, explained that “we don’t condone discrimination, period.” Williams continued: “How can we as an organization, and even we as a people, condone discrimination against anybody on any reason, and we say that that’s justified based on our spiritual beliefs?”

Watch it:

Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and a protestant pastor, noted the difference between some churches’ beliefs and laws in society as a whole. “What I found is we have clergy who theologically and culturally and spiritually are heterocentric when it comes to marriage, but constitutionally and legally they refuse to be homophobic,” he explained.

Watch it:

Election

Romney Adviser Says Romney Received ‘Thunderous Applause Over and Over Again’ At NAACP

By Aviva Shen on Jul 11, 2012 at 4:06 pm

After his speech to the NAACP today elicited several rounds of boos from the audience, Mitt Romney’s campaign staff insisted that he was, in fact, received very well.

Romney staffers told press that they were “pleasantly surprised by the positive reception.” Tara Wall, a policy adviser, even declared, “I think actually there was a lot more applause, he had a standing ovation at the end, there was a lot more applause than disagreement.”

Wall went on to praise Romney for “saying tough things,” arguing with reporters, “I’ll take three boos out of thunderous applause over and over again.”

ThinkProgress reporters found a somewhat different response; attendees called the speech “patronizing” and Romney’s Obamacare comments in particular “a serious misjudgment.”

Even Romney himself admitted to Fox Business that he “expected” the boos, but wanted to deliver the same message he does to everyone else.

The longest and loudest boos came when Romney promised to repeal Obamacare, which he called “a non-essential expensive program.” Watch it:

Election

NAACP Reacts To Mitt Romney: ‘Patronizing,’ ‘Totally Disconnected,’ ‘A Serious Misjudgment’

By Judd Legum and Scott Keyes on Jul 11, 2012 at 1:25 pm

HOUSTON, Texas — Mitt Romney addressed the national convention of the NAACP Wednesday morning, the nation’s largest civil rights organization. He was cordially received by the audience, who greeted him with a standing ovation, but the tone changed quickly after the GOP presidential candidate began his remarks.

The crowd booed Romney when he called for the full repeal of Obamacare and audibly laughed when he suggested he would be a better president than Obama for the African-American community. Also notable was what was left unsaid. Romney failed to address voting rights, which is a major theme of this NAACP gathering.

ThinkProgress was on the scene and talked to some NAACP members after Romney’s speech to get their thoughts. James Waters said some of Romney’s comments were “patronizing,” while Joe Brown argued that Romney “made a serious misjudgment relating to the health care reform.” Allytra Perryman went even further: “I don’t think he has any way to even remotely relate to the everyday citizen, let alone African-American citizens.”

Watch it:

Update

The NAACP has released the following statement: “This morning Governor Romney laid out his policy agenda for this nation. Unfortunately, much of his agenda is at odds with what the NAACP stands for – whether the issue is equal access to affordable health care, reforming our education system or the path forward on marriage equality. We appreciate that he was courageous and took the opportunity to speak with us directly.”

NEWS FLASH

Mitt Romney Contradicts Himself In Front Of Marriage Equality-Endorsing NAACP | Speaking at the NAACP convention in Houston, Texas, Mitt Romney once again contradicted himself. The presidential hopeful told conference-goers that he hopes to represent all Americans “of every race, creed, and sexual orientation.” However, Romney then went on to promise that he will “defend traditional marriage.” If Romney wishes to truly “represent” gay Americans, his consistent pledge to prevent their basic rights is not a good start. Ironically, Romney’s speech at the NAACP comes only weeks after the civil rights group voted to support marriage equality as a continuation of its historic mission to promote equal protection under the law. Watch it:

– Steven Perlberg

By Guest Blogger on Jul 11, 2012 at 12:25 pm

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