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Disenfranchisement Quotes

Browse 23 quotes about Disenfranchisement.

Disenfranchisement Quotes

“Automation, globalization, and increased education requirements - compounded by failures in government and institutions - have given rise to a generation of disconnected and fearful people. The number of men who have dropped out of the labour force and stopped looking for work has quintupled since the 1950s. The result is a form of community trauma deeply felt in many rural areas: intergenerational poverty, long-term unemployment, degraded environments, disconnected social relationships, and destructive social norms.”

PovertyUnemploymentDisenfranchisement
Book:Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods
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“I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did it, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics at the time. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe, the entire government gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.”

AmericaWomens RightsDystopiaCoup D éTatDisenfranchisement
Book:The Handmaid’s Tale
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“Those who seek to suppress voting today are either ignorant of the history or are, as I suspect is more often the case, malevolently choosing to ignore it... To suppress the vote is to make a mockery of democracy. And those who do so are essentially acknowledging that their policies are unpopular. If you can't convince a majority of voters that your ideas are worthy, you try to limit the pool of voters. This reveals a certain irony: Many who are most vocal in championing a free, open, and dynamic economy are the same political factions that suppress these principles when it comes to the currency of ideas.”

VotingSuffrageVoting RightsDisenfranchisement
Book:What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism
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“[Jeff] Sessions was "someone who thinks that the VRA ought not to have ever been in existence" because, for him, it was an "intrusive piece of legislation." Thus, in a move that flipped the Voting Rights Act on its head, his investigation targeted only counties where African Americans had won office.”

RacismAmerican HistoryCivil Rights MovementUs HistorySuffrageVoting Rights ActDisenfranchisementJeff Sessions
Book:One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
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“The ACLU and NAACP went right after the core of the issue—there was no voter fraud. Therefore, there was no state interest at stake—certainly nothing that could warrant this assault on the Fifteenth Amendment. It "bear[s] repeating," they asserted, that Indiana had "not identified even a single instance of voter impersonation fraud occurring at the polls in the history of Indiana" and no one in the state has "ever been charged" with that crime. Ever. Moreover, when the bill was being drafted, "no evidence of in-person impersonation fraud was presented to the legislature," making SEA 483, at best, a solution in search of a problem.”

RacismAmerican HistoryUs HistorySuffrageIndianaVoter SuppressionVoter FraudDisenfranchisement
Book:One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
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“And finally, now, to-day, when we are awakening to the fact that the perpetuity of republican institutions on this continent depends on the purification of the ballot, the civic training of voters, and the raising of voting to the plane of a solemn duty which a patriotic citizen neglects to his peril and to the peril of his children’s children,—in this day, when we are striving for a renaissance of civic virtue, what are we going to say to the black voter of the South? Are we going to tell him still that politics is a disreputable and useless form of human activity? Are we going to induce the best class of Negroes to take less and less interest in government, and to give up their right to take such an interest, without a protest? I am not saying a word against all legitimate efforts to purge the ballot of ignorance, pauperism, and crime. But few have pretended that the present movement for disfranchisement in the South is for such a purpose; it has been plainly and frankly declared in nearly every case that the object of the disfranchising laws is the elimination of the black man from politics.”

GovernmentPoliticsVotingAfrican AmericansBlacksElectionsVoting RightsDisenfranchisementBallot
Book:The Souls of Black Folk
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“Because I work at places like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and PBS, some people see me as a stand-in for the coastal elites, for the systems they believe have been crushing them down, and I get that. When those of us in positions of power in the establishment media and the larger cultural institutions of society tell stories that don’t include you, it is disorienting and disenfranchising. It is as if you look into society’s mirror and find that you are not there. People rightly get furious when that happens.”

MediaElitesNew York TimesCommentatorsJournalistsPbsDisenfranchisementAtlanticCoastal ElitesCultural Elites
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“The civil rights movement didn't deal with the issue of political disenfranchisement in the Northern cities. It didn't deal with the issues that were happening in places like Detroit, where there was a deep process of deindustrialization going on. So you have this response of angry young people, with a war going on in Vietnam, a poverty program that was insufficient, and police brutality. All these things gave rise to the black power movement. The black power movement was not a separation from the civil rights movement, but a continuation of this whole process of democratization.”

PeopleWarWholeYoungPoliticalProcessBlackDealsCitiesPovertyIssuesRightsMovementHappeningsProgramPoliceAngryResponseSeparationCivil RightsVietnamPolice BrutalityBrutalityCivil Rights MovementDetroitInsufficientContinuumDemocratizationBlack PowerDisenfranchisement
Author:Danny Glover
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“Grassroots groups challenge the "business-as-usual" environmentalism that is generally practiced by the more privileged wildlife-and conservation-oriented groups. The focus of activists of color and their constituents reflects their life experiences of social, economic, and political disenfranchisement.”

PoliticalSocialChallengesEnvironmentFocusGroupsEconomicColorRacismActivistUsualLife ExperienceConservationPrivilegedWildlifeEnvironmentalismConstituentsGrassrootsDisenfranchisement
Author:Robert D Bullard
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“One of the great sadnesses of modern life, because of our disenfranchisement and disillusionment with religion, is that we don't have access to these ideas. Yoga and meditation, for me, is a way of, in this secular world, accessing very very beautiful principles that would perhaps make us happier, at a time when people feel disillusioned with the economy, concerned about the ecology, worried with politicians, and don't trust what they're being told on television.”

PeopleWorldWayFeelsIdeasBeautifulPrinciplesEconomyMeditationSadnessModernTelevisionPoliticianYogaConcernedAccessWorriedSecularEcologyModern LifeDon't TrustDisillusionmentVery BeautifulDisillusionedDisenfranchisement
Author:Russell Brand
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