It's hard to believe that the national election is only two months away. And with the Democratic National Convention kicking off in Charlotte, N.C yesterday, American electoral politics has been placed against the backdrop of the American South — arguably ground zero for voter rights, civil rights and labor rights movements in this country.
The history of the South is bound tightly to the fight for racial justice and equality in this country, and chief among these struggles has been securing equal access to the polls for all Americans. In 2012, nearly half a century after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, American electoral politics are far from a level playing field. Each election cycle brings new challenges to legitimate voters, particularly voters of color who have increasingly left their mark on the political landscape. At the same time, each election cycle has also brought memorable opportunities to organize, build community, and continue to assert our rightful role in this democracy.
Today, a slew of attacks on early voting, same day registration, and voter ID laws remind us that voter suppression is alive and well. Yet so too are the millions of individuals, institutions and organizations who refuse to go back to the period before the Voting Rights Act secured our access to the polls. At ColorofChange this sentiment reverberates through our work and the voices of our nearly one million members, and it's important that we share these voices with the rest of the country while remembering the hard work that has informed them. Too often the challenges we face are not discussed alongside the powerful and positive efforts of resistance that accompany them. Such efforts are just as important to discuss, and in a very real way can act as motivation to continue the fight for equality.
That's why we launched vote.colorofchange.org, a one-stop voting rights destination meant to serve and connect you, our members and audience, to each other, and facilitate the right to vote in order to continue ColorOfChange's mission of strengthening the black political voice and making government responsive to our needs. In order to remind folks of all the voices out there working to protect our right to vote, we need you to participate.
This month we will be bringing you the first ever ColorOfChange voter registration blog series. You'll get all the information you need to register to vote, get your friends and family registered to vote, keep up with any information related to your vote and (most importantly) share your stories with the ColorOfChange community. Every week we will be calling on you to upload photos, stories, memories, pictures, videos, anything related to your right to vote.
So stay tuned. And visit vote.colorofchange.org to register and click here to start sharing now.
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