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      Kim Janey Becomes Boston's First Black Mayor

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      At 11, Kim Janey was bused into a neighborhood where Black students were pelted with rocks. As acting mayor, she hopes to help Boston step out of the shadow of that era.BOSTON — On a September morning in 1976, an 11-year-old Black girl climbed onto a yellow school bus, one of tens of thousands of children sent crisscrossing the city by court order and deposited in the insular neighborhoods of Boston in an effort to force them to integrate.As her bus swung uphill into the heart of the Irish-American enclave of Charlestown, she could see police officers taking protective positions around the bus. After that, the mob: white teenagers and adults, shouting and throwing rocks, telling them to go back to Africa.That girl, Kim Janey, became acting mayor of Boston on Monday, making her the first Black person to occupy the position, at a moment of uncommon opportunity for people of color in this city.With the confirmation of her predecessor, Martin J. Walsh, as U.S. labor secretary, the 91-year succession of Irish-American and Italian-American mayors appears to be ending, creating an opening for communities long shut out of the city’s power politics.It isn’t clear what role Ms. Janey, 55, will play in this moment. As the president of Boston’s City Council, she automatically takes the position for seven months before the November election, and she has not said whether she plans to run. But the five candidates already in the race are all people of color, and racial justice is certain to be a central theme of the campaign.Students arrived by school bus at South Boston High School in Boston on Sept. 8, 1976. An initiative to desegregate Boston Public Schools, put in effect in the fall of 1974, was met with strong resistance from many residents of Boston.Ed Jenner/The Boston Globe, via Getty ImagesNearly 50 years after court-ordered desegregation, Boston, the home of abolitionism, remains profoundly unequal. In 2015, the median net worth for white families in the city was nearly $250,000 compared with just $8 for Black families, according to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.Boston’s police force remains disproportionately white. And a recent review of city contracts found that during the first term of Mr. Walsh’s administration, Black-owned firms landed roughly half of 1 percent of the $2.1 billion in prime contracts.None of this comes as a surprise to Bostonians who, like Ms. Janey, came of age in the 1970s — the “kids on the bus,” as one of them put it. Now in their 50s, they are a group without illusions about what it will take to close those gaps.Denella J. Clark, 53, president of the Boston Arts Academy Foundation, carries a scar on her left leg from a broken bottle that was thrown at her by a white woman when she was a 9-year-old being bused into a South Boston elementary school.“I still think we have those people that are throwing bottles, they’re just not doing it overtly,” she said. “When you see some of this change, it’s because people were forced to make those changes, just like in the court case” that led to busing in Boston.Michael Curry, who was 7 when he was first bused into Charlestown, described a similar conclusion: In a city with a limited pool of jobs and contracts, “the people who have taken advantage of those things are being asked to share that pie.”“Boston will not go without a fight,” he said.‘Where Are They Now?’Mr. Curry, now 52, recently realized something: More than four decades after he was bused to the Warren-Prescott elementary school, he has rarely returned to Charlestown.He is middle-aged now, a father of three and a lawyer. But he can still close his eyes and replay the path of that bus as it slid past the Museum of Science, then turned right and crossed into Charlestown, where crowds were waiting, armed with rocks or bricks.“It boggles my mind to this day,” he said. “How much hate and frustration and anger would you have to have to do that to children?”He wonders sometimes about those white parents. “Where are they now?” he said. “Do they look back and say ‘I was there that day’?”This month, Mr. Curry, a former president of Boston’s N.A.A.C.P. branch, reached out to his social media networks, asking friends for their own memories. The responses came back fast — and raw. “Absolutely no interest in recollecting memories from that era,” one said. “It was a nightmare.”One person who has struggled to put that time behind her is Rachel Twymon, 59, whose family’s story was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 book, “Common Ground,” which later became a television mini-series. Ms. Twymon still seethes at her mother, one of the book’s protagonists, for sending her to school in Charlestown in the name of racial justice.“For adults to think their decision was going to change the world, that was crazy,” said Ms. Twymon, an occupational therapist who lives in New Bedford, Mass. “How dare you put children in harm’s way? How dare you? I have never been able to come to grips with that.”Rachel Twymon outside her home in New Bedford, Mass. She says that she still seethes over her mother’s decision to send her to school in Charlestown in the name of racial justice.Philip Keith for The New York TimesMs. Janey’s recollections of busing are tempered, by comparison.“I had no idea what would be in store,” she said. “When I finally sat on the school bus and faced angry mobs of people, had rocks thrown at our bus, racial slurs hurled at us, I was not expecting that. And there’s nothing that can prepare you for that.”She quickly added, though, that the environment changed as soon as she stepped inside Edwards Middle School, where her closest friend was Cathy, a white girl from an Irish-American family.“The other thing that I would share, and I think this gets lost when we talk about this painful part of our history, is that inside that school building, I was a kid,” she said. “We were children. We cared about who we would play with, and who’s going to play jump rope, and who wants to play hopscotch.”Lost and GainedThe city Ms. Janey will lead as mayor is radically changed, in part because of what happened after busing: The working-class, Irish-American neighborhoods that fiercely resisted integration began to wane under pressure from white flight and gentrification.They had been poor neighborhoods. Patricia Kelly, 69, a Black teacher from New Jersey who was assigned to a Charlestown elementary school in 1974, recalled her shock at the deprivation she encountered there; once, she gingerly approached a boy’s mother about the stench of urine on his clothes and was told that they had no hot water.After busing began, Boston’s public schools lost almost a third of their white students in 18 months, as white families enrolled their children in parochial schools or boycotted schools in protest.For David Arbuckle, 58, who is white, it meant that most of his old friends were gone. He recalled walking to school through crowds of white residents who bellowed at him for violating the antibusing boycott, a daily gantlet that gave him stomachaches.A crowd of antibusing demonstrators storming up East Sixth Street in South Boston armed with rocks and clubs on Feb. 15, 1976. Ulrike Welsch/The Boston Globe, via Getty ImagesFor decades, some of those childhood friends blamed desegregation for ruining their chances in life, Mr. Arbuckle said.“They would tell you, ‘I didn’t get an education because Black people came to my school and took my seat,’” he said. The 1980s only deepened their grievances, he said; factory jobs were drying up, and court-ordered affirmative action policies, many complained, made it more difficult to be hired by the Police or Fire Departments.“It almost feels like a lost generation, to some extent,” said Mr. Arbuckle, who now works in management for the commuter rail system in Boston. Returning to Charlestown as an adult, shuttling his sons to hockey practice, he sometimes wore a suit, straight from the office, and people from the neighborhood “would turn on me because I was a yuppie.”He said it was hard to imagine members of the older generation softening their views, even as the city surrounding them became wealthier and more diverse.“I don’t know if people have to die off,” he said. “I know it sounds awful.”‘A Hundred-Year Fight’Ms. Janey — whose ancestors escaped to Canada through the Underground Railroad and began settling in Boston in the second half of the 19th century — does not dwell on busing when she tells the story of her life, except to say that it was a setback.“It was the first time that I didn’t feel safe in school,” she said. “It was the first time that I was not confident about how teachers felt about me as a little Black girl, the way I felt in elementary school.”Her parents withdrew her as soon as they could, sending her to the middle-class suburb of Reading through a voluntary busing program, starting in the eighth grade. She would go on to work as a community activist, serving at Massachusetts Advocates for Children for almost two decades before running for a seat on the Boston City Council in 2017.She described her work in education, in a talk to students last year, as an extension of the civil rights movement that swept up her parents.“The fight for quality education for Black families in this city dates to the beginning of this country,” she said. “It’s a hundred-year fight.”The fury unleashed by busing reshaped Boston in many ways, including by setting back the ambitions of Black candidates. White anger made it difficult for them to build the multiracial coalitions that were necessary to win citywide office in Boston, said Jason Sokol, a historian and author of “All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics From Boston to Brooklyn.”“You can’t overlook how powerful the legacy of the battles over school desegregation were,” he said. “The white resistance was so vicious that it didn’t seem like a political system a lot of African-Americans wanted to be part of. It was just very poisoned for a long time.”Michael Curry, former president of the Boston branch of the N.A.A.C.P., outside the Warren-Prescott elementary school. Mr. Curry said he could still close his eyes and remember the school bus crossing into Charlestown, where armed crowds were waiting with rocks and bricks.Philip Keith for The New York TimesMs. Janey, who became mayor when Mr. Walsh stepped down on Monday, will officially take the oath of office on Wednesday, acutely conscious of her place in history.The city will be watching to see if she makes a mark between now and November: The powers of an acting mayor in Boston are limited, and she may have difficulty making key appointments. Ms. Clark of the Boston Arts Academy Foundation, who serves on Ms. Janey’s transition committee, warned against expecting swift change in the city’s politics.“I worry they’re going to block her at every instance,” she said. “We all know what Frederick Douglass said: ‘Power concedes nothing.’ This is Boston. This is a big boys’ game.”Still, Thomas M. Menino, one of Ms. Janey’s predecessors, became acting mayor under similar circumstances, when the city’s mayor was appointed as a U.S. ambassador. Mr. Menino used the platform to build a powerful political base and was elected mayor four months later, becoming the city’s first Italian-American mayor. He went on to be re-elected four times, serving for more than 20 years.Ms. Janey, by all appearances, would like to follow a similar path. Her swearing-in, she said last week, is a moment full of hope, a measure of how far Boston has come.“I’m at a loss for words, because, at 11 years old, I saw firsthand some of the darkest days of our city,” she said. “And here I am.” More

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      How Anti-Asian Activity Online Set the Stage for Real-World Violence

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      On platforms such as Telegram and 4chan, racist memes and posts about Asian-Americans have created fear and dehumanization.In January, a new group popped up on the messaging app Telegram, named after an Asian slur.Hundreds of people quickly joined. Many members soon began posting caricatures of Asians with exaggerated facial features, memes of Asian people eating dog meat and images of American soldiers inflicting violence during the Vietnam War.This week, after a gunman killed eight people — including six women of Asian descent — at massage parlors in and near Atlanta, the Telegram channel linked to a poll that asked, “Appalled by the recent attacks on Asians?” The top answer, with 84 percent of the vote, was that the violence was “justified retaliation for Covid.”The Telegram group was a sign of how anti-Asian sentiment has flared up in corners of the internet, amplifying racist and xenophobic tropes just as attacks against Asian-Americans have surged. On messaging apps like Telegram and on internet forums like 4chan, anti-Asian groups and discussion threads have been increasingly active since November, especially on far-right message boards such as The Donald, researchers said.The activity follows a rise in anti-Asian misinformation last spring after the coronavirus, which first emerged in China, began spreading around the world. On Facebook and Twitter, people blamed the pandemic on China, with users posting hashtags such as #gobacktochina and #makethecommiechinesepay. Those hashtags spiked when former President Donald J. Trump last year called Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu.”While some of the online activity tailed off ahead of the November election, its re-emergence has helped lay the groundwork for real-world actions, researchers said. The fatal shootings in Atlanta this week, which have led to an outcry over treatment of Asian-Americans even as the suspect said he was trying to cure a “sexual addiction,” were preceded by a swell of racially motivated attacks against Asian-Americans in places like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate.“Surges in anti-Asian rhetoric online means increased risk of real-world events targeting that group of people,” said Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, which tracks misinformation and extremism online.He added that the anti-China coronavirus misinformation — including the false narrative that the Chinese government purposely created Covid-19 as a bioweapon — had created an atmosphere of fear and invective.Anti-Asian speech online has typically not been as overt as anti-Semitic or anti-Black groups, memes and posts, researchers said. On Facebook and Twitter, posts expressing anti-Asian sentiments have often been woven into conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon and in white nationalist and pro-Trump enclaves. Mr. Goldenberg said forms of hatred against Black people and Jews have deep roots in extremism in the United States and that the anti-Asian memes and tropes have been more “opportunistically weaponized.”But that does not make the anti-Asian hate speech online less insidious. Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation, said the misinformation and racist speech has led to a “dehumanization” of certain groups of people and to an increased risk of violence.Negative Asian-American tropes have long existed online but began increasing last March as parts of the United States went into lockdown over the coronavirus. That month, politicians including Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, and Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California, used the terms “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese coronavirus” to refer to Covid-19 in their tweets.Those terms then began trending online, according to a study from the University of California, Berkeley. On the day Mr. Gosar posted his tweet, usage of the term “Chinese virus” jumped 650 percent on Twitter; a day later there was an 800 percent increase in their usage in conservative news articles, the study found.Mr. Trump also posted eight times on Twitter last March about the “Chinese virus,” causing vitriolic reactions. In the replies section of one of his posts, a Trump supporter responded, “U caused the virus,” directing the comment to an Asian Twitter user who had cited U.S. death statistics for Covid-19. The Trump fan added a slur about Asian people.In a study this week from the University of California, San Francisco, researchers who examined 700,000 tweets before and after Mr. Trump’s March 2020 posts found that people who posted the hashtag #chinesevirus were more likely to use racist hashtags, including #bateatingchinese.“There’s been a lot of discussion that ‘Chinese virus’ isn’t racist and that it can be used,” said Yulin Hswen, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco, who conducted the research. But the term, she said, has turned into “a rallying cry to be able to gather and galvanize people who have these feelings, as well as normalize racist beliefs.”Representatives for Mr. Trump, Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Gosar did not respond to requests for comment.Misinformation linking the coronavirus to anti-Asian beliefs also rose last year. Since last March, there have been nearly eight million mentions of anti-Asian speech online, much of it falsehoods, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights firm..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-coqf44{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-coqf44 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-coqf44 em{font-style:italic;}.css-coqf44 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-coqf44 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#333;text-decoration-color:#333;}.css-coqf44 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In one example, a Fox News article from April that went viral baselessly said that the coronavirus was created in a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan and intentionally released. The article was liked and shared more than one million times on Facebook and retweeted 78,800 times on Twitter, according to data from Zignal and CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool for analyzing social media.By the middle of last year, the misinformation had started subsiding as election-related commentary increased. The anti-Asian sentiment ended up migrating to platforms like 4chan and Telegram, researchers said.But it still occasionally flared up, such as when Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a researcher from Hong Kong, made unproven assertions last fall that the coronavirus was a bioweapon engineered by China. In the United States, Dr. Yan became a right-wing media sensation. Her appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in September has racked up at least 8.8 million views online.In November, anti-Asian speech surged anew. That was when conspiracies about a “new world order” related to President Biden’s election victory began circulating, said researchers from the Network Contagion Research Institute. Some posts that went viral painted Mr. Biden as a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party.In December, slurs about Asians and the term “Kung Flu” rose by 65 percent on websites and apps like Telegram, 4chan and The Donald, compared with the monthly average mentions from the previous 11 months on the same platforms, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute. The activity remained high in January and last month.During this second surge, calls for violence against Asian-Americans became commonplace.“Filipinos are not Asians because Asians are smart,” read a post in a Telegram channel that depicted a dog holding a gun to its head.After the shootings in Atlanta, a doctored screenshot of what looked like a Facebook post from the suspect circulated on Facebook and Twitter this week. The post featured a miasma of conspiracies about China engaging in a Covid-19 cover-up and wild theories about how it was planning to “secure global domination for the 21st century.”Facebook and Twitter eventually ruled that the screenshot was fake and blocked it. But by then, the post had been shared and liked hundreds of times on Twitter and more than 4,000 times on Facebook.Ben Decker More

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      In Georgia, Republicans Take Aim at Role of Black Churches in Elections

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Georgia, Republicans Take Aim at Role of Black Churches in ElectionsNew proposals by the G.O.P.-controlled Legislature have targeted Sunday voting, part of a raft of measures that could reduce the impact of Black voters in the state.Israel Small spent most of last fall helping members of his church with the absentee voting process.Credit…Stephen B. Morton for The New York TimesNick Corasaniti and March 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSAVANNAH, Ga. — Sundays are always special at the St. Philip Monumental A.M.E. church. But in October, the pews are often more packed, the sermon a bit more urgent and the congregation more animated, and eager for what will follow: piling into church vans and buses — though some prefer to walk — and heading to the polls.Voting after Sunday church services, known colloquially as “souls to the polls,” is a tradition in Black communities across the country, and Pastor Bernard Clarke, a minister since 1991, has marshaled the effort at St. Philip for five years. His sermons on those Sundays, he said, deliver a message of fellowship, responsibility and reverence.“It is an opportunity for us to show our voting rights privilege as well as to fulfill what we know that people have died for, and people have fought for,” Mr. Clarke said.Now, Georgia Republicans are proposing new restrictions on weekend voting that could severely curtail one of the Black church’s central roles in civic engagement and elections. Stung by losses in the presidential race and two Senate contests, the state party is moving quickly to push through these limits and a raft of other measures aimed directly at suppressing the Black turnout that helped Democrats prevail in the critical battleground state.“The only reason you have these bills is because they lost,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who oversees all 534 A.M.E. churches in Georgia. “What makes it even more troubling than that is there is no other way you can describe this other than racism, and we just need to call it what it is.’’The push for new restrictions in Georgia comes amid a national effort by Republican-controlled state legislatures to impose harsh restrictions on voting access, in states like Iowa, Arizona and Texas.But the targeting of Sunday voting in new bills that are moving through Georgia’s Legislature has stirred the most passionate reaction, with critics saying it recalls some of the racist voting laws from the state’s past.“I can remember the first time I went to register,” said Diana Harvey Johnson, 74, a former state senator who lives in Savannah. “I went to the courthouse by myself and there was actually a Mason jar sitting on top of the counter. And the woman there asked me how many butterbeans were in that jar,” suggesting that she needed to guess correctly in order to be allowed to register.“I had a better chance of winning the Georgia lottery than guess how many butterbeans,” Ms. Harvey Johnson continued. “But the fact that those kinds of disrespects and demoralizing and dehumanizing practices — poll taxes, lynchings, burning crosses and burning down houses and firing people and putting people in jail, just to keep them from voting — that is not that far away in history. But it looks like some people want to revisit that. And that is absolutely unacceptable.”Diana Harvey Johnson, a former Georgia state senator, said she remembered facing “dehumanizing practices” when registering to vote in her youth.Credit…Stephen B. Morton for The New York TimesThe bill that passed the House would limit voting to at most one Sunday in October, but even that would be up to the discretion of the local registrar. It would also severely cut early voting hours in total, limit voting by mail and greatly restrict the use of drop boxes — all measures that activists say would disproportionately affect Black voters.A similar bill is awaiting a vote in the Senate. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, has indicated he supports new laws to “secure the vote” but has not committed to all of the restrictions.Voting rights advocates say there is deep hypocrisy embedded in some of the new proposals. It was Georgia Republicans, they point out, who championed mail balloting in the early 2000s and automatic voting registration just five years ago, only to say they need to be limited now that more Black voters have embraced them.Georgia was one of nine mostly Southern states and scores of counties and municipalities — including the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan — whose records of racist voter suppression required them to get federal clearance for changes to their election rules. The requirement fell under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the civil rights era law that curtailed the disenfranchisement of Blacks in the South.The changes Republicans are now pursuing would have faced stiff federal review and possible blockage under the part of the act known as Section 5. But the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, effectively gutted that section in a 2013 ruling.Even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, churches played a key role in civic engagement, often organizing nonpartisan political action committees during the 1970s and ’80s that provided, among other resources, trips to vote on Sunday where it was permitted. The phrase “souls to the polls” took root in Florida in the 1990s, according to David D. Daniels III, a professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Raphael Warnock, one of the Democrats who won a special Senate race in January, is himself the pastor of the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.Historically, churches provided Black congregants more than just transportation or logistical help. Voting as a congregation also offered a form of haven from the intimidation and violence that often awaited Black voters at the polls.“That was one of the things that my father said, that once Black people got the right to vote, they would all go together because they knew that there was going to be a problem,” said Robert Evans, 59, a member of St. Phillip Monumental. “Bringing them all together made them feel more comfortable to actually go and do the civic duty.”In Georgia, the role of the A.M.E. church in civic engagement has been growing under the guidance of Bishop Jackson. Last year he began Operation Voter Turnout, seeking to expand the ways that A.M.E. churches could prepare their members to participate in elections. The operation focused on voter education, registration drives, assistance with absentee ballots and a coordinated Sunday voting operation.Bishop Reginald T. Jackson in Atlanta. He began a program to better prepare church members to participate in elections.Credit…Matthew Odom for The New York TimesIt had an impact in last November’s election, even amid the coronavirus pandemic: According to the Center for New Data, a nonprofit research group, African-Americans voted at a higher rate on weekends than voters identifying as white in 107 of the state’s 159 counties. Internal numbers from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, found that Black voters made up roughly 37 percent of those who voted early on Sunday in Georgia, while the Black population of Georgia is about 32 percent.State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican and chief sponsor of the House bill, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did three other Republican sponsors. In introducing the bill, Republicans in the Legislature portrayed the new restrictions as efforts to “secure the vote” and “restore confidence” in the electoral process, but offered no rationale beyond that and no credible evidence that it was flawed. (Georgia’s election was pronounced secure by Republican electoral officials and reaffirmed by multiple audits and court decisions.)Limiting Sunday voting would affect Black voters beyond losing the assistance of the church. It would inevitably lead to longer lines during the week, especially in the Black community, which has historically been underserved on Election Day.The bill would also ban what is known as “line warming,” the practice of having volunteers provide water, snacks, chairs and other assistance to voters in line.Latoya Brannen, 43, worked with members of the church and a nonprofit group called 9 to 5 to hand out snacks and personal protective equipment in November.“We’ve learned that giving people just those small items helps keep them in line,” Ms. Brannen said. She said she had occasionally handed out bubbles to parents who brought young children with them.If Sunday voting is limited, it could induce more Black Georgians to vote by mail. During the pandemic, churches played an instrumental role in helping African-Americans navigate the absentee ballot system, which they had not traditionally used in the same proportion as white voters.At Greater Gaines Chapel A.M.E., a church about a half-mile from St. Philip Monumental, Israel Small spent most of last fall helping church members with the absentee process.“We took people to drop boxes to help make sure it would be counted,” said Mr. Small, 79. He said he was angered to learn this winter that Republicans were moving to restrict mail voting, too.Among the changes Republican state legislators have proposed is a requirement that voters provide proof of their identification — their license numbers or copies of official ID cards — with their absentee ballot applications.That signals a shift for Republicans, who have long controlled the Statehouse; in 2005 they passed a similar proposal, but for in-person voting.Pastor Bernard Clarke of St. Philip Monumental A.M.E. church has marshaled the effort to get his congregation to the polls for five years.Credit…Stephen B. Morton for The New York TimesThat measure included a new “anti-fraud” requirement that voters present one of a limited set of government-issued identification cards, like a driver’s license, at voting stations.The restrictions affected Black voters disproportionately, data showed. At the same time, state Republicans were moving to ease the process of absentee voting — predominantly used by white voters then — by stripping requirements that absentee voters provide an excuse for why they couldn’t vote in person and exempting them from the new photo-identification requirement.Justice Department lawyers reviewed the proposals under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and found that the new ID law would likely make voting disproportionately harder for Black citizens. The attorneys recommended that the George W. Bush administration block it.In a memo that the department’s political leadership ultimately disregarded, staff lawyers noted that a sponsor of the legislation had told them that she believed Black voters were likely to vote only when they were paid to do so, and that if the new law reduced their voting share it was only because it would limit opportunities for fraud.The memo also stated that the law’s sponsors defended the more lenient treatment of mail voting — like its exemption from the ID provision — by arguing that it was more secure than in-person voting because it produced a paper trail.Now, after an election year in which Mr. Trump repeatedly and falsely disparaged mail voting as rife with fraud, state Republicans are arguing that mail-in voting needs more restrictions.There is no new evidence supporting that assertion. But one thing did change in 2020: the increase in Black voters who availed themselves of absentee balloting, helping Democrats to dominate the mail-in ballot results during the presidential election.“It’s just really a sad day,” Mr. Small, from the Greater Gaines church, said. “It’s a very challenging time for all of us, just for the inalienable right to vote that we fought so hard for, and right now, they’re trying to turn back the clock to try to make sure it’s difficult,” he said.Pastor Clarke of St. Philip Monumental said the Republican effort to impose more restrictions could backfire, energizing an already active electorate.“Donald Trump woke us up,” he said. “There are more people in the congregation that are more aware and alert and have a heightened awareness to politics. So while we know that and we believe that his intentions were ill, we can honestly say that he has woken us up. That we will never be the same.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Brewing Voting Rights Clash

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn PoliticsThe Brewing Voting Rights ClashRepublicans are reuniting — and re-energized — as they pursue a longstanding political goal.March 2, 2021, 6:47 p.m. ETCredit…Antonio de LucaThe 2020 election was a wild one. And under the strange circumstances, Republicans wound up turning against one another on an issue that tends to unite them: voting access and elections.Some Republican officials fought to restrict access to the ballot amid the pandemic, while others endorsed mail-in voting and other methods to make voting easier. After the election, some Republicans backed President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, while a number of state-level officials — such as Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and his secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger — defended the integrity of their own election systems.But now that the election is behind us, Republicans are reuniting on this issue, leading efforts around the country to restrict access to the vote. And in many cases they’re weaponizing Trump’s fabrications from 2020 to justify doing it. In Georgia this week, the Republican-led state legislature is moving forward with a bill to restrict absentee voting and limit early voting on weekends.The G.O.P. has one big advantage here: a newly cemented 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which is broadly seen as receptive to restrictions on voting, even if it didn’t support Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The justices heard oral arguments today in a challenge to the Voting Rights Act stemming from policies in Arizona during the 2020 election, and the court appeared sympathetic to the Republican plaintiffs’ arguments.Democrats, meanwhile, are equally unified in their efforts to preserve widespread voting access, particularly in Black and brown communities that are most heavily targeted by restrictive voting laws. The House today held a debate on the For the People Act, known as H.R. 1, which among other things would create a basic bill of rights for voting access. The legislation is expected to pass the chamber tomorrow along party lines.To put this all in perspective, I called Wendy Weiser, who studies these issues as the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U.’s law school. She took time out of a whirlwind news day on the voting front to answer a few questions for On Politics. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.Hi, Wendy. Let’s begin with the news from Georgia. What is the significance of the legislation making its way through the state legislature there, and is it part of a trend?The bill in Georgia is one of the most significant and restrictive voter suppression bills in the country, but it is not unique right now. We’ve been tracking the legislation to restrict and also to expand voting access across the country for over a decade, and right now we have well over 250 bills pending in 43 states across the county that would restrict access to voting. That is seven times the number of restrictive voting bills we saw at the same time last year. So it is a dramatic spike in the push to restrict access to voting.So we’ve seen this is a growing movement. It’s not brand-new this year, it wasn’t invented by Donald Trump, but it was certainly supercharged by his regressive attack on our voting systems. We’re seeing its impact in Georgia, but also across the country.Republicans have been talking about voter fraud, and attempting to limit access to the ballot, for many years. How much is the current surge in restrictive voting legislation related to Donald Trump and the conspiracy theories he pushed last year, during and after the campaign?Many of these bills are fueled by the same rhetoric and grievances that were driving the challenges to the 2020 election. In addition to expressly referencing the big lie about widespread voter fraud and that Trump actually won the election, they’re targeting the methods of voting that the Trump campaign was complaining about. So, for example, the single biggest subject of regressive voter legislation in this session — roughly half the bills — is mail voting.That is new this year. We’ve been tracking efforts to restrict access to voting for a very long time, and absentee voting has not been the subject of legislative attack before. It was the politicization of that issue in the 2020 election, principally by the Trump campaign and allies, that I think helped elevate that issue to a grievance level that would cause it to be the subject of legislative attack.The Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in a challenge to the Voting Rights Act, brought by the attorney general of Arizona. What is at stake in that case?On a narrow level, the case is challenging two provisions of an Arizona law that made it harder for voters of color in Arizona to participate in the election process, but the case’s significance is much broader. The plaintiffs and the Republican National Committee are actually arguing to dramatically scale back the strength of the nationwide protections against voting discrimination in the federal Voting Rights Act.About eight years ago, the Supreme Court gutted the most powerful provision of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance provision, which applied to states with a history of discrimination. That led to disastrous outcomes across the country, but it did not invalidate the nationwide protections against discrimination in voting, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. So this is the next shoe, which I hope will not drop.At a time when voting rights in America are under significant attack, more than they have been in decades — an attack through racially targeted efforts to restrict access to voting — we need the protections of the Voting Rights Act more than ever. So this is absolutely the wrong direction to go in.With the Voting Rights Act in peril, Democrats in Congress are moving forward with legislation to ensure people’s access to the ballot. What are their proposals?There are two major pieces of voting rights legislation that are moving through Congress. The one that was not voted on today is called the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and it would restore the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires a federal review of changes in certain states to see if they’re discriminatory. It would also make other improvements to the Voting Rights Act to make it more effective.The other bill, which was voted on today, is called the For the People Act, H.R. 1. It would create a baseline level of voter access rules that every American could rely on for federal elections. This one would address almost comprehensively the attacks on voting rights that we’re seeing in state legislatures across the country. So, for example, in many states we’re seeing attempts to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting. H.R. 1 would require all states to offer no-excuse absentee voting. Every state would then offer that best practice of voting access, and it would no longer be manipulated, election by election, by state legislators to target voters they don’t like.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Supreme Court Test for What’s Left of the Voting Rights Act

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Supreme Court Test for What’s Left of the Voting Rights ActWhile state legislatures consider new voting restrictions to address claims of election fraud, the justices will hear arguments on what kind of legal scrutiny such laws should face.The Supreme Court has never considered how a particular provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to policies that restrict the vote.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 28, 2021, 12:24 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As Republican state lawmakers around the nation are working furiously to enact laws making it harder to vote, the Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear its most important election case in almost a decade, one that will determine what sort of judicial scrutiny those restrictions will face.The case centers on a crucial remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race. Civil rights groups are nervous that the court, now with a six-justice conservative majority, will use the opportunity to render that provision, Section 2, toothless.The provision has taken on greater importance in election disputes since 2013, when the court effectively struck down the heart of the 1965 law, its Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination.But Chief Justice John G. Roberts’s majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision, Shelby County v. Holder, said Section 2 would remain in place to protect voting rights by allowing litigation after the fact.“Section 2 is permanent, applies nationwide and is not at issue in this case,” he wrote.But it is more than a little opaque, and the Supreme Court has never considered how it applies to voting restrictions.The new case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, was filed by the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to challenge voting restrictions in Arizona. Lawyers for civil rights groups said they hoped the justices would not use the case to chip away at the protections offered by Section 2.“It would be just really out of step for what this country needs right now for the Supreme Court to weaken or limit Section 2,” said Myrna Pérez, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, which submitted a brief supporting the challengers.Civil rights lawyers have a particular reason to be wary of Chief Justice Roberts. When he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he unsuccessfully worked to oppose the expansion of Section 2, which had initially covered only intentional discrimination, to address practices that had discriminatory results.The Arizona case concerns two kinds of voting restrictions. One requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.” The law makes exceptions for family members, caregivers and election officials.“I can’t believe the court would strike down common-sense election integrity measures,” Mark Brnovich, the state’s attorney general, said in an interview. In his brief, he wrote that “a majority of states require in-precinct voting, and about 20 states limit ballot collection.”Whether the particular restrictions challenged in the case should survive is in some ways not the central issue. The Biden administration, for instance, told the justices in an unusual letter two weeks ago that the Arizona measures did not violate Section 2. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s interpretation of Section 2, which would limit its availability to test the lawfulness of all sorts of voting restrictions.Section 2 bars any voting procedure that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” That happens, the provision goes on, when, “based on the totality of circumstances,” racial minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”Dissenting in the Shelby County case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Section 2 was not nearly as valuable as Section 5.A polling site in Phoenix in 2016. The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, was filed by the Democratic National Committee that year to challenge voting restrictions in Arizona.Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York Times“Litigation occurs only after the fact, when the illegal voting scheme has already been put in place and individuals have been elected pursuant to it, thereby gaining the advantages of incumbency,” she wrote. “An illegal scheme might be in place for several election cycles before a Section 2 plaintiff can gather sufficient evidence to challenge it. And litigation places a heavy financial burden on minority voters.”While Section 5 was available, Section 2 was used mostly in redistricting cases, where the question was whether voting maps had unlawfully diluted minority voting power. Its role in testing restrictions on the denial of the right to vote itself has been subject to much less attention.But Paul M. Smith, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, which submitted a brief supporting the challengers, said lower courts had worked out a sensible framework to identify restrictions that violate Section 2.“It is not enough that a rule has a racially disparate impact,” he said. “That disparity must be related to, and explained by, the history of discrimination in the jurisdiction. Our hope is that the court will recognize the importance of maintaining this workable test, which plays an essential role in reining in laws that operate to burden voting by Blacks or Latinos.”The two sets of lawyers defending the measures in Arizona did not agree on what standard the Supreme Court should adopt to sustain the challenged restrictions. Mr. Brnovich, the state attorney general, said the disparate effect on minority voters must be substantial and caused by the challenged practice rather than some other factor. Lawyers for the Arizona Republican Party took a harder line, saying that race-neutral election regulations that impose ordinary burdens on voting are not subject at all to challenges under Section 2.Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that both Arizona restrictions violated Section 2 because they disproportionately disadvantaged minority voters.In 2016, Black, Latino and Native American voters were about twice as likely to cast ballots in the wrong precinct as were white voters, Judge William A. Fletcher wrote for the majority in the 7-to-4 decision. Among the reasons for this, he said, were “frequent changes in polling locations; confusing placement of polling locations; and high rates of residential mobility.”Similarly, he wrote, the ban on ballot collectors had an outsize effect on minority voters, who use ballot collection services far more than white voters because they are more likely to be poor, older, homebound or disabled; to lack reliable transportation, child care and mail service; and to need help understanding voting rules.Judge Fletcher added that “there is no evidence of any fraud in the long history of third-party ballot collection in Arizona.”In dissent, four judges wrote that the state’s restrictions were commonplace, supported by common sense and applied neutrally to all voters.Lawmakers were entitled to try to prevent potential fraud, Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain wrote. “Given its interest in addressing its valid concerns of voter fraud,” he wrote, “Arizona was free to enact prophylactic measures even though no evidence of actual voter fraud was before the legislature.”The appeals court stayed its ruling, and the restrictions were in place for the election in November.Mr. Brnovich will argue before the justices on Tuesday in the case that bears his name. He said the Ninth Circuit’s approach “would jeopardize almost every voting integrity law in almost every state.”Leigh Chapman, a lawyer with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which filed a brief supporting the challengers, said the Supreme Court faced a crossroad.“Especially in the absence of Section 5,” she said, “Section 2 plays an essential role in advancing the federal commitment to protecting minority voters and ensuring that they have an equal opportunity to participate in the political process.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher In a Democratic Senate

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher In a Democratic SenateSenator Raphael Warnock was sworn in this week as Georgia’s first Black senator, and he arrived with a canny canine assist.Senator Raphael Warnock and Alvin the beagle during the production of his campaign ad.Credit…Warnock for GeorgiaPublished More

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      The Youthful Movement That Made Martin Luther King Jr.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Youthful Movement That Made Martin Luther King Jr.In this moment made so dark by white nationalism and truth denial, Americans should look to the country’s legacy of young leaders with forward-thinking wisdom.Mr. Benjamin is the author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.”Jan. 17, 2021, 7:00 p.m. ETMartin Luther King Jr. at home in Montgomery, Ala., in May 1956.Credit…Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThere’s an image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that’s seared into my mind. Eyes inviting and innocent, face relaxed, the casually dressed Dr. King reminds me of a cousin at a card party — he looks so young. When Dr. King elucidated his dream at the March on Washington in 1963, he was 34 — younger than most Americans now, given the national median age of 38.Despite his youth, or perhaps because of it, Dr. King understood the long view of history. He could not have foreseen a crowd brandishing guns and ransacking the Capitol, abetted by a failed president and right-wing digital media networks peddling debunked conspiracy theories. But he might have foreseen the Senate election victories of two youthful Southerners, Jon Ossoff, 33, and Raphael Warnock, 51, the latter a charismatic preacher and a successor to his pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church.Dr. King was a mobilizer of voters as much as he was an orator. To put voting rights at the forefront of the country’s consciousness, Dr. King helped launch a voter-registration drive in Selma, Ala., in early 1965. In many marches, over many weeks, Dr. King accompanied hundreds of Selma’s Black residents to the county courthouse. During one voter registration trip, he and 250 demonstrators were hauled to jail by the segregationist sheriff. That very day, county officers arrested some 500 schoolchildren who were protesting discrimination.When a 26-year-old Black civil rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson, was fatally shot during a march in nearby Marion, Ala., Dr. King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organized a voting-rights march from Selma to the state Capitol in Montgomery. The hundreds of demonstrators, including Hosea Williams, 39, and John Lewis, 25, chairman of the S.N.C.C., were stopped as they left Selma, at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Alabama state troopers and local vigilantes attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas. Alongside others badly injured, Mr. Lewis (a future U.S. congressman) suffered a fractured skull during “Bloody Sunday.”The march resumed days later with federal protection. It stood on the shoulders of longstanding action: As far back as the 1930s, Ella Baker, in her 20s and 30s, worked as a community organizer in New York. By the mid-1940s, she was traveling across the South, recruiting new members to anti-racist groups and registering voters.Personally and through their work, Ms. Baker, Mr. Williams, Mr. Lewis and Dr. King faced down legally sanctioned oppression. They confronted horrors that we do not feel as regularly in our bones. They lived through them. How is it that they remained patriots?In this moment made so dark by white nationalism and truth denial, Americans should look to these examples of young leaders with forward-thinking wisdom to carry us through, to show how our civil rights ancestors got things done. This country can survey their organizing tactics to see step-by-step how Dr. King and his allies accomplished so much. Commemoration involves studying their careers as a strategy and amending their efforts to provide a road map to achieving political power.At this tender juncture in our country’s trajectory, countless young grass-roots leaders and local organizations are reshaping human equality and power. Setting a national example, the New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter and Georgia STAND-UP were part of an effort that registered roughly 520,000 overlooked, new voters after 2016. The New Georgia Project alone knocked on at least two million doors, made over six million phone calls and sent four million texts to get out the vote during the general election and the runoff, according to the organization.To Americans who voted for the first time this cycle, or to anyone else born after 2002, Bloody Sunday can seem like ancient history — as distant and abstract as the Teapot Dome scandal. I’ve spoken to young people who don’t know what a sit-in or redlining is. But to others who cast a ballot for Mr. Warnock or Mr. Ossoff, a direct protégé of John Lewis, watching Confederates storm a federal building after a failed right-wing attempt to invalidate votes in heavily Black Democratic strongholds, Bloody Sunday does not look like distant history at all.Georgia’s electoral upsets and the resistance to Trumpism belong to a larger narrative and pantheon of liberation campaigns. These movements do not peddle in transactional politics; they forge transformative politics. They don’t dwell in the greasy realm of back-scratching and short-term calculation. They work deeply in vision, courage and action, persevering and believing in themselves when no one else does.“You see, I think that, to be very honest, the movement made Martin rather than Martin making the movement,” Ella Baker once reflected to an interviewer. “This is not a discredit to him. This is, to me, as it should be.”As we commemorate Dr. King, we need to toss the “great man” concept of leadership, our knee-jerk longing to worship epic individuals and not citizen action. Contrary to the mythology of most King celebrations, Dr. King’s true contribution wasn’t as a single messiah of civil rights, but as a formidable organizer of people and causes. To peddle the great Moses version of Dr. King’s legacy is to betray the greatness of his extraordinary deeds, whose lessons and necessity are more urgent than ever.Rich Benjamin (@IAmRichBenjamin) is writing a book that will be a family memoir and portrait of America. He is the author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More