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Urban League: State Voting Laws Could Widen Gap between Blacks and Whites
'Occupy the Vote' is theme for organization's annual State of Black America report
The National Urban League is calling on African-Americans to get out and vote come election time as a means of countering state laws the group says threaten education and economic gains made by blacks. Borrowing from the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 101-year-old civil rights group made "Occupy the Vote" the theme for its annual State of Black America report to be released Wednesday at Howard University. The report evaluates African-Americans progress toward equality, and this year's version "Occupy the Vote to Employ, Educate & Empower" also measures white and Latino equality.
The campaign will include, among other things, a website dedicated to monitoring voter laws and providing information on voting requirements. The league also hopes to conduct get-out-the-vote bus tours, said CEO Marc Morial.
A concern, Morial said, is that some state laws could widen the equality gap between white and black Americans by discouraging political participation of African-Americans. He says their votes are needed to ensure continued support of programs that have helped close the equality gap.
"I refuse to operate from a standpoint of, 'Woe is me,'" said Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans. "We have to tell people we are not going to let these laws stop us."
According to the report, improvements in health and education among blacks have made up for losses in civic engagement, economics and social justice. "The bottom line is that the recession has caused slippage of progress in the status economically of African-Americans and when we talk about these issues, we are trying to ensure that any recovery that's being articulated and designed is a recovery that includes everyone, that it is not just a recovery for some," Morial said.
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