no right to vote in America's "democracy"

http://www.globalresearch.ca/repeal-of-important-civil-rights-legislation-us-supreme-court-guts-the-1965-voting-rights-act/5340539

US Supreme Court guts "Voting Rights Act"

June 2013 decision by the US Supreme Court gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act is an outrage that must be answered by working people. This act of judicial oppression is a milestone in the mounting attacks on democratic rights by the US financial aristocracy and its political servants.By a 5-4 margin, the court effectively abrogated one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. The Voting Rights Act remains on the books, but its enforcement mechanism has been declared unconstitutional and struck down.The opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts is insolent in its dismissal of any concern over five unelected judges overturning an act of Congress and defying the popular will. This ruling will shock and anger millions of working people—and it should.Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy will go down in history alongside those high court justices who issued the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision in 1857. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, these minions of American capitalism have demonstrated that the US ruling class is opposed to the democratic principles for which millions of working people have given their lives.The narrow majority dropped any pretense to judicial restraint or respect for the separation of powers, overturning a law that was reauthorized only seven years ago by overwhelming votes—98-0 in the Senate, 390-33 in the House of Representatives—and signed into law by a Republican president, George W. Bush.In striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, the court majority defied the plain language of the Constitution. The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted in the wake of the Civil War, reads:Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.For nearly a century, Congress took no action to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, while African Americans were systematically disenfranchised throughout the southern states. Only in response to mass civil rights struggles that spanned more than a decade was the Voting Rights Act finally enacted in 1965. The law is explicitly grounded on the language of Section 2, which provides the most sweeping grant of legislative power that can be afforded by the Constitution.Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act identified those states, mainly in the South, which were to face federal oversight of voting and election law changes because of their long history of excluding African Americans from the polls. . These justices are encouraged by the general atmosphere of reaction that permeates government and media circles.The president of the United States asserts the right to target any individual, including US citizens, for assassination. Those such as Edward Snowden who expose government criminality are witch-hunted and vilified as traitors. An entire American city, Boston, is placed on lockdown in complete disregard of fundamental constitutional rights—all without any significant opposition from within the political establishment.The five arch-reactionaries would not dare to hand down such a ruling if they were not encouraged as well by the cowardice and complicity of American liberalism and the Democratic Party, which have gone along with sweeping attacks on democratic rights. None of these spent forces will lift a finger to defend the democratic rights of the people.The claim by Roberts that there is no longer any significant racial discrimination in the states targeted by the Voting Rights Act is patently false. These states, particularly in the Deep South, remain among the most politically reactionary and backward in the US, with the highest rates of executions, the worst conditions of life for the masses, and incessant efforts to curtail the right of workers and minorities to vote.The dissenting opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and signed by three other justices, had no difficulty citing a mass of empirical evidence of ongoing racially-motivated discrimination, including efforts to purge the rolls of black voters, the redrawing of electoral boundaries to eliminate black office-holders, and the moving of polling places to make it harder for blacks to vote.Ginsburg noted the character of the plaintiff, Shelby County, Alabama, in the suburbs of the city of Birmingham, one of the key battlegrounds of the civil rights era. The majority opinion made no attempt to explain why federal oversight of Shelby County should be ended, nor could it since both the county and towns within it have repeatedly been sanctioned under the Voting Rights Act for discriminatory practices, as recently as 2008.The attack on the right to vote is not fundamentally a racial issue. It is part of an assault on the democratic rights of the entire working class. Dozens of states in recent years have enacted voter ID laws and other anti-democratic provisions in a deliberate effort to make it harder for the poor, the elderly, and students to vote.There is a definite class logic behind this campaign: the American ruling elite is well aware that its policies of militarism and social austerity are opposed by the vast majority of the population. Opinion polls show only 15 percent support the Obama administration’s drive to war in Syria, and even fewer back cuts in Social Security, overturning a law that was reauthorized only seven years ago by overwhelming votes—98-0 in the Senate, 390-33 in the House of Representatives—and signed into law by a Republican president, George W. Bush.In striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, the court majority defied the plain language of the Constitution. The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted in the wake of the Civil War, reads:Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous the Fifteenth Amendment, while African Americans were systematically disenfranchised throughout the southern states. Only in response to mass civil rights struggles that spanned more than a decade was the Voting Rights Act finally enacted in 1965. The law is explicitly grounded on the language of Section 2, which provides the most sweeping grant of legislative power that can be afforded by the Constitution.Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act identified those states, mainly in the South, which were to face federal oversight of voting and election law changes because of their long history of excluding African Americans from the polls. These justices are encouraged by the general atmosphere of reaction that permeates government and media circles.The president of the United States asserts the right to target any individual, including US citizens, for assassination. Those such as Edward Snowden who expose government criminality are witch-hunted and vilified as traitors. An entire American city, Boston, is placed on lockdown in complete disregard of fundamental constitutional rights—all without any significant opposition from within the political establishment.The five arch-reactionaries would not dare to hand down such a ruling if they were not encouraged as well by the cowardice and complicity of American liberalism and the Democratic Party, which have gone along with sweeping attacks on democratic rights. None of these spent forces will lift a finger to defend the democratic rights of the people.The claim by Roberts that there is no longer any significant racial discrimination in the states targeted by the Voting Rights Act is patently false. These states, particularly in the Deep South, remain among the most politically reactionary and backward in the US, with the highest rates of executions, the worst conditions of life for the masses, and incessant efforts to curtail the right of workers and minorities to vote.The dissenting opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and signed by three other justices, had no difficulty citing a mass of empirical evidence of ongoing racially-motivated discrimination, including efforts to purge the rolls of black voters, the redrawing of electoral boundaries to eliminate black office-holders, and the moving of polling places to make it harder for blacks to vote.The attack on the right to vote is not fundamentally a racial issue. It is part of an assault on the democratic rights of the entire working class. Dozens of states in recent years have enacted voter ID laws and other anti-democratic provisions in a deliberate effort to make it harder for the poor, the elderly, and students to vote.There is a definite class logic behind this campaign: the American ruling elite is well aware that its policies of militarism and social austerity are opposed by the vast majority of the population.

The defense of democratic rights requires the development of a mass popular movement of working people and youth in opposition to the entire political establishment, its two-party system, and the capitalist state institutions they defend.