We Threw Away Our Umbrella and Now It’s Fucking Pouring…
A Cry For Help by Billy Finn — 4/29/21
The wave of voter suppression we’re seeing across the country is exactly what Justice Ginsberg warned us about in 2013. Without a renewed commitment to voting rights, we may be powerless to do anything about it.
In his now infamous opinion in the landmark Shelby v. Holder case in 2013, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts justified the majority’s decision to make like Snidely Whiplash and tie the Voting Rights Act to some train tracks as a freight train barreled towards it by declaring, unironically, that racism was over.
“Things have changed dramatically,” Roberts wrote, probably whilst fanning himself upon his throne of White Privilege. “The conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.”
The measure in question was the preclearance provision of the VRA, which required states with a history of racial discrimination in voting to gain federal approval of any changes to their election laws. Despite decades of successful oversight, the provision had apparently now served its purpose, the Chief Justice seemed to be saying. We had a Black president, Beyoncé had just dropped “Drunk in Love,” and the former Confederate states could clearly now be trusted to make their own…
