Race and Class Discourse from an Ivory Tower in Connecticut

By Cheri Quickmire and Bilal Dabir Sekou Published 12:00 am EST, Thursday, February 20, 2020 In Georgia, officials are purging 100,000 voters from the voter rolls. In Florida, the modern equivalent of a poll tax is being thrust upon formerly incarcerated residents. And in Texas, in a willful policy effort to drive down Election Day turnout, 750 polling places have been shuttered since 2012. Across the nation, voting rights are indeed under attack. But here at home, this legislative session, Connecticut has the opportunity to send a message to America by expanding participation in democracy - and for those who need it most. We can do it by passing automatic voter registration - known as AVR. It's a critical reform as the 2020 election approaches, and it needs to be one of the first issues the Legislature takes up this session. Here's why. Last year on the final day of legislative business, just as the Senate was set to join the House in passing ...

During a recent campaign rally in Colorado Springs, President Donald Trump expressed his distaste for the Academy Award winning South Korean film, ‘Parasite,’ and his love for ‘Gone With The Wind,’ the film adopted from the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell. Like its record-breaking predecessor, ‘Birth of Nation,’ the1939 box-office hit is a white supremacist fantasy film that perpetuates Civil War and Lost Cause myths. Until he said to loud applause, “Can we get ‘Gone With the Wind’ back, please?,” the President had not blown a racial dog whistle that loud since he came down the escalator in Trump Tower announcing his bid for the presidency and proclaiming that most undocumented Mexican immigrants bring drugs and crime, and are rapists. Under Trump, the national Republican Party has become the party of white identity politics, resentment, grievances, and anger with a long list of scores to settle with their enemies, real and imagined – elites, the media, third-world immigrants, pe...