New restrictions on voting are really intended to keep people who vote Democratic from the polls, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly, and minorities.
Voter “fraud” is a fraud.
The GOP strategy is simple: Suppress the vote, win the election.
Fact:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reports that while 200 million votes were cast in federal elections since October 2002, only 86 individuals have been convicted of federal voter fraud — and none for offenses that would have been prevented by a voter ID requirement.
Source: The New York Times
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
- Howard Zinn
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
