Arlene Holt Baker: What Voter Suppression Has to Do With My Mother
From Daily Kos:
My Mother
By Arlene Holt Baker
When I was a child, I saw voter suppression firsthand. And it’s ugly.
I was just a little girl and I wanted a new pair of shoes. You can’t get new shoes now, my mother told me, because she had to save the money to pay her poll tax.
That’s how important the right to vote was to my mother—she knew it was a sacred right that people had fought and died for and she was not about to treat it as anything less.
Dozens of states passed voter suppression laws in the past year—potentially disenfranchising more than 21 million Americans. Voter ID laws, like those adopted in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states (some of which have been enjoined by courts), are nothing more than the poll taxes of a new era. And no one should have to pay for the right to vote.
The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that 10% of eligible voters don’t have the types of ID being required—and the effect on some groups, including people of color, is much greater. Despite Pennsylvania Rep. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe claim that people who lack the right ID are “lazy,” getting the “proper” ID can cost money and time that many just don’t have. Even if photo IDs are given for free, other forms of ID—like a birth certificate or driver’s license—are required to get one and they do cost money. And low-income people paid by the hour and senior citizens suffer if they have to wait in long lines for IDs.
That’s what happened recently to 80-year-old Jean Foreman. Before Pennsylvania’s voter ID requirements were put on hold until after the 2012 election, she spent four hours in a state Department of Transportation office in Pittsburgh in her second attempt to get a photo ID. You see, when she was born, hospitals didn’t keep records of the births of black babies, so she had no birth certificate.
Ms. Foreman got help from a coalition of the AFL-CIO and several community partners (including the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza and AFL-CIO constituency groups like the A. Philip Randolph Institute) that provided volunteers to help voters register, obtain IDs and get legal assistance at a My Vote, My Right event right before the Sept. 25 National Voter Registration Day.
Read the rest: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/25/1150047/-My-Mother
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