Since last year, 15 states have passed new voting laws that critics say suppress the votes of the poor, students and people of color. This is the topic of a major speech by NAACP head Benjamin Jealous before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. The NAACP wants a U.N. delegation of experts to monitor the impact of voter identification laws, as well new restrictions on same-day registration, early voting, Sunday voting, and making it harder to run a voting registration drive. Its outreach to the United Nations has been compared to the group’s efforts in the 1940s and 1950s when it sought international support in its fight for civil rights and against lynching. Its visit to the United Nations also comes days after the group joined with thousands of people in Alabama to retrace the historic 1965 civil rights march in Selma. In what became known as “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965, police attacked demonstrators at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge as they tried to march for voting rights. Outrage over the crackdown led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. more
But is the UN the best place to challenge America’s laws? The NAACP’s move threatens American sovereignty by offering an un-elected foreign body a say in American politics. The world has seen the natural conclusion of allowing foreign entities a say in national politics in the Middle East, where countries have been carved up and leadership redistributed from relatively liberal strong-men to radically conservative, racist, sexist and homophobic strong-men.
America has a system that works well when all of its citizens are active and engaged in holding its elected officials and their financial backers accountable for public policy. Voting, boycotting, protesting, recalling elected officials, etc. Seeking outside aid sends a message that the NAACP has lost faith in the American system and democracy at a time when the message should be “get off the Internet and get out there using historically proven judicial and political methods” to attack the new voter laws.”
Here’s Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now coverage of the matter: