Voting rights advocates fear that counties carrying out aggressive purges under legal duress will push officials to purge eligible voters.
"In a lot of these settlements, the push to remove people from the rolls may result in a lot of mistakes," Cameron Bell, an attorney for the liberal think tank Demos, said after fighting a lawsuit in Broward County, Florida. "That’s why Demos got involved, to make sure the parties weren’t reaching settlements that would lead to mistakes that would disenfranchise eligible voters."
A year ago this week, a white man named Garry from North Carolina called C-SPAN to talk to a black guest about his racial prejudices. He confessed that he feared black people and wondered aloud how he might change. The guest, Heather McGhee, the president of Demos, a progressive public policy organization that advocates for equality, listened thoughtfully, nodding slowly.
One year ago, a North Carolina white man named Garry Civitello called into C-SPAN. A black woman, Demos president Heather McGhee, was on the air. [...]
McGhee believes that Civitello's journey over the past year has assisted in reversing some of his long-held racial stereotypes, and has made him a more empathetic person.
New York, NY – In response to Donald Trump’s pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Demos Vice President of External Affairs Tori O'Neal-McElrath released the following statement:
"Tonight Donald Trump has doubled down on his bigoted and hateful rhetoric with his pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has been found guilty of racial profiling of Latinos. Trump has again sided with white supremacists who seek to divide our nation with racism.
Trump has again sided with white supremacists who seek to divide our nation with racism.
New York, NY – Today, in response to Donald Trump’s visit to Phoenix, Arizona, Demos Vice President of External Affairs Tori O'Neal-McElrath released the following statement:
“At Donald Trump’s disastrous rally in Phoenix tonight, we saw more of the same bigoted, hateful rhetoric from President Trump that continues to tear our nation apart. With every speech, and every action, we see more of who Donald Trump truly is: our divider-in-chief.
After 9/11, George W. Bush turned immigration into a national security issue. He created the ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, folding them both into the Department of Homeland Security. It was based “on the myth that our country would be more safe if we cracked down on immigration,” Katherine Culliton-González, a senior counsel for the left-leaning think tank Demos, told the New Republic. “ICE became part of this national security agency.”
The share of student loan borrowers who entered repayment owing $20,000 or more doubled — from 20% to 40% — between 2002 and 2014, according to a report published Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What’s more, the share of borrowers entering repayment with $50,000 or more in debt tripled during the same period, the CFPB report found, jumping from 5% to 16%.
“Class has always been racially determined in this country,” Heather McGhee, president of the left-leaning public policy group Demos, told me. “In a country where you can have a credo of equality and social mobility and the ability of any man to rise as far as his talents and drive can take him, that has always had to be put in relative terms.” [...]
The groups have stepped up their game, and more recently have targeted counties and states known to play crucial roles in elections. They also began attracting the attention of major voting rights groups like Demos and the League of Women Voters, which sought to intervene in the lawsuits and help the elections officials put up more of a fight.
Two years ago, 54 percent of Republicans told Pew colleges had a positive impact on the direction of the country, according to that survey. That fell to 43 percent last year and 36 percent this year. Democrats, meanwhile, have gradually become more positive about higher education, with 72 percent this year viewing higher ed as having a positive effect, up from 65 percent in 2010.
Even so, observers on both the left and the right said the Education Next findings are interesting but not necessarily surprising.
New York (August 12, 2017) — In response to today’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research at the public policy organization Demos, released the following statement.
“The hate that roiled Charlottesville last night and today is not only shameful, but utterly clear. When crowds of white men bearing torches storm the streets, screaming “White lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us,” what we are seeing is white supremacy on proud, despicable display.
I’ve met a lot of white people who believe that black students get so much financial aid and scholarships that they don’t have to pay for college. [...]
But the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an African-American trade union group, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, and Larry Harmon, a man who was purged from the rolls, are suing the state over the law.
The Trump Justice Department is undermining the ability of people to vote, said Brenda Wright, the vice president of policy and legal strategies at Demos, which is representing the plaintiffs in the Ohio case.
The Justice Department released an amicus brief in the case, currently before the Supreme Court, over whether Ohio can continue to remove “infrequent voters” who fail to cast a ballot over a six-year period.
The Department of Justice abandoned a principled position that it has held for decades through three presidencies. By reversing course and choosing to stand with Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and his practice of purging countless eligible Ohioans from the rosters, the DOJ has confirmed many peoples’ worst fears that it will no longer work to protect and expand the right to vote, but instead undermine it.
Larry Harmon, 60, hadn’t voted in a while when he drove to the high school in November 2015 to weigh in on a local referendum in Kent, Ohio. But he wasn’t allowed to cast his ballot. [...]
The Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party is convinced it has a solution: have the party move left. “People are looking for a populism, but a multi-racial populism,” Heather McGhee, of the leftist voting-rights group Demos, said on Meet the Press this morning. “They’re looking for candidates who say, ‘I’m willing to take on the wealthy and powerful, and also I’m not willing to let the wealthy and powerful divide us from each other so that they can have the spoils of our great nation.’”