Nov. 10, 2014

With Huge Shoes to Fill, Lynch is Poised to Become First Black Woman Attorney General
By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Obama’s nomination of New York federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch to succeed Eric Holder as attorney general is drawing applause from national civil rights leaders. Despite her stellar reputation, it remains unclear whether Lynch will assume the same civil rights agenda that Holder is leaving unfinished.

“The nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the new Attorney General of the United States is applaudable and deserving. She is an excellent and worthy choice to succeed Attorney General Eric Holder in his groundbreaking work for the American people,” says Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been deeply involved in the case of Michael Brown, shot by Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson Aug. 9. 

Sharpton, who has apparently known Lynch since the police abuse case of Abner Louima in the late 1990s, says he has “not always agreed” with her on cases, but, “I have always seen her operate in the most fair, balanced, and just manner.”

Lynch, currently federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., would become the nation’s first Black female attorney general if confirmed by the Senate. Her appointment is considered non-controversial, mainly because she has received bi-partisan confirmations by the Senate in two previous appointments to federal positions. She must now go before the Senate Judiciary Committee; then recieve Senate confirmation by majority vote.

"The nomination of Ms. Lynch, who would become the nation's first African American female Attorney General, has signaled that the President is uncompromising and determined that our country's top attorney be dedicated to doing what is right for the American people. President Obama has nominated one of the best and brightest to help lead this nation and move our justice system forward,” says Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio).

When the news broke that Holder was resigning, Sharpton, NAACP President Cornell William Brook, National Urban League President Marc Morial, and a string of others were in the midst of a press conference, Sept. 25, expressing high hopes for Holder to take over the criminal investigations in the killings of Michael Brown and the choke-hold death of Staten Island, New Yorker Eric Garner as well as the “pandemic of police misconduct” around the country, as described by NAACP President/CEO Cornell William Brooks. 

Sharpton said at that press conference, “There is no attorney general that has demonstrated a civil rights record equal to Eric Holder.” 

With huge shoes to fill in the eyes of many in the Black community, Lynch appears passionate for the position. At the White House announcement Nov. 7, she thanked President Obama “for your faith in me in asking me to succeed an Attorney General whom I admire, and to lead the Department that I love.”She also thanked Holder for “leading by example, and always, always pushing this Department to live up to its name…The Department of Justice is the only Cabinet Department named for an ideal.  And this is actually appropriate, because our work is both aspirational, and grounded in gritty reality.  It’s both ennobling, and it’s both profoundly challenging.”

Describing the position of Attorney General as “the people’s lawyer”, President Obama praised Lynch’s qualifications.“It’s pretty hard to be more qualified for this job than Loretta.  Throughout her 30-year career, she has distinguished herself as tough, as fair, an independent lawyer who has twice headed one of the most prominent U.S. Attorney’s offices in the country.  She has spent years in the trenches as a prosecutor, aggressively fighting terrorism, financial fraud, cybercrime, all while vigorously defending civil rights,” the President said. “One of her proudest achievements was the civil rights prosecution of the officers involved in the brutal assault of the Haitian immigrant Abner Louima.”

He also credited her with having successfully prosecuted the terrorists who plotted to bomb the Federal Reserve Bank and the New York City subway; brought charges against public officials in corruption cases; helped to “secure billions in settlements from some of the world’s biggest banks accused of fraud” and sent some of New York’s most violent and notorious mobsters and gang members to prison.

“Loretta might be the only lawyer in America who battles mobsters and drug lords and terrorists, and still has the reputation for being a charming people person,’” Obama said to laughter in the East Room.

Lynch is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and rose from Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York to Chief of the Long Island Office, Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney, and U.S. Attorney, according to the White House bio. She is the daughter of a school librarian and a fourth-generation Baptist minister. She is married with two step children.

NAACP President Brooks underscored the crucial issues currently on the table, including the police violations as well as key voting rights issues. “Her nomination could not have come at a more critical time in our nation’s history,” said Brooks. “We look forward to working with Ms. Lynch to ensure that our nation's voting rights laws, employment protection laws and anti-housing discrimination laws are strictly and fairly enforced.”

Before she establishes her own record with the national civil rights community, perhaps her best reference is Holder himself. “Loretta has earned the trust and respect of Justice Department employees at every level, in Washington and throughout the country.  She is held in high regard by criminal justice, law enforcement, and civil rights leaders of all stripes,” Holder said. “I have had the good fortune of working closely with Loretta on a range of important issues over the years, and particularly since the beginning of 2013, when I asked her to serve as chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee…And I know that she is both well-qualified and uniquely positioned to continue the critical work that’s underway and build upon the progress we have made over the past six years, from advancing criminal justice reform to safeguarding civil rights.”

Nov. 9, 2014

Nov. 9, 2014

Election Confirms Difficulties With New Voting Limits 
By Zenitha Prince 

Barbara Arnwine, Executive Director, CEO
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Thousands of voters from across the nation reported problems with voting during this General Election, stemming not only from a rash of restrictive voting laws but also from the administrative deficiencies of an outdated voting system, according to the Election Protection coalition of civil rights groups.

“Every election should be a celebration of democracy. Instead, what we’re hearing today from too many polling places around the country is that voters are having problems casting their ballots,” said Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, during a press call on Nov. 4.

Some of the problems were the outcome of controversial election laws—such as voter ID requirements, reduced early voting, elimination of same-day registration, citizenship requirements and more—that have erected barriers to the ballot box.

“Today, and for the past several weeks during early voting, we have been witnessing the most unfair, confusing and discriminatory voting landscape in almost 50 years. And, it’s a disgrace to our citizens, to our nation and to our standing in the world as a beacon of democracy,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

But, added Henderson, it came as no surprise. “This is the predictable outcome of the first major election since the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County vs. Holder last year, when a bare majority voted to gut critical pieces of the Voting Rights Act.”

Since the game-changing ruling—and Congress’ failure to amend and update the VRA  as the high court directed—14 states and an untold number of municipalities have introduced new, often limiting election laws.

“Voting should make us truly equal, whether we are rich or poor; young or old; famous or unknown; male or female; gay or straight; White, Black, Asian or Latino,” Henderson added. “But in state after state we have seen politicians manipulating the election rules to make it harder for people, primarily people of color, the poor and students, to register and to vote.”

In Texas, for example, the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the state to implement its restrictive voter ID law just two weeks before the election—after protracted legal wrangling—fostered widespread confusion that promises to disenfranchise much more than the estimated 600,000 Texans—mostly people of color—that do not possess the accepted forms of identification, activists said.

Nicole Austin-Hillery, of the Brennan Center for Justice, which had volunteers on the ground in Texas, shared the story of an elderly African-American women, originally from Mississippi, who had been voting since the age of 18, despite the barriers and dangers associated with the franchise. Unaware the ID she possessed was no longer acceptable, she ventured out to the polls only to be rudely told she could not vote and castigated for not getting the proper ID in time.

Others who did try to obtain the IDs had to mount massive bureaucratic hurdles, sometimes without success, and people with military IDs were given conflicting information depending on where they went.

“Again, confusion,” Austin Hillery said. “This is the problem with these kind of laws.”

Latinos and Asians, particularly minority language Americans who are covered under Section 203 of the VRA, faced significant problems in places like California, Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the NALEO Educational Fund, said, for example, that Latinos in Louisville, Ky., complained of intimidation and lack of assistance from poll workers.

“This is particularly concerning because we know in Kentucky [there] is an emerging Latino electorate. And what we have seen across the country is that as Latinos become a larger and larger share of the population and the electorate we tend to see a backlash,” he said.

Jerry Vattamala, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense, which was monitoring 147 poll sites in 11 states and Washington, D.C., reported that several jurisdictions covered under Section 203 lacked the required interpreters. More egregiously, he said, a poll worker in Pennsylvania, who was helping a voter who needed language assistance, did not cast ballot for the gubernatorial candidate the voter wanted. And, in a similar case, the poll worker told the voter he/she had to vote “yes” for all the ballot initiatives.

Many of the calls to Election Protection’s hotlines—1-866-OUR-VOTE, 1888-VEY-VOTA (for Hispanics) and 1-888-API-VOTE (for Asians)—came from people experiencing administrative problems, however.

“Today the 1-866 hotline received more than 10,000 calls [mostly from] Florida, Georgia, Texas, New York and California,” Arnwine said. In Georgia, specifically, Arnwine said the names of an estimated 40,000 persons who applied to register were still missing from the rolls.

“We’ve received as many as 1,337 calls in the last two days from Georgia and several hundred beforehand,” Arnwine said. “And, as if that weren’t bad enough, the secretary of state’s website, which many of voters rely on to verify their voter registration status and find their polling places has been down for most of the morning. And it appears that many of the counties’ phone lines were overwhelmed with voters unable to reach anyone.”

As of 8 p.m., election night, the Election Protection hotline had received more than 18,000 calls, a nearly 40 percent increase from calls received in 2010.
Similar problems in other states were reported: poor signage and insufficient information concerning poll sites, absence of poll workers, registration lists being delivered late, people who registered not finding their names on lists, Asian Americans with unique naming conventions or long names having to vote provisionally because their names were misspelled during registration, voting machines—which can be essential to disabled voters—not working, and much more.

“This isn’t what people call voting irregularities; these are large-scale systemic problems that are denying thousands of Americans their most basic right: the right to have their voices heard,” Arnwine said.

The problems raise, again, the importance of modernizing voter registration and other voting procedures and widely instituting conventions such as same-day registration, which could allow voters to immediately remedy problems caused by administrative errors or some other type of confusion and to vote.
Based on what activists are seeing in communities all over the country during this election, if voting barriers are removed, people will turn out, said Miles Rapport, of Common Cause.

“We can be heartened by the fact that people are trying extremely hard to vote…. Despite some of these discouragements, we are seeing many, many people coming to the polls in larger numbers than they did in 2010,” he said. “[So], it becomes the responsibility of election officials and elected officials all across the country to try over the next several years to make this process simpler, more streamlined, more accessible and more truly democratic.”