leaders of the modern day movement for civil rights find themselves pressing for action from a u.s. president, it is often to call for justice on many of the same issues. this week leaders of major civil rights and legal organizations met with president obama at the white house and items on the agenda included notably voting rights, education, and states rights. the discussion turned to progressive initiatives recently enacted or proposed by the obama administration around the issues of sentencing reform, minimum wage and felony disenfranchisement. president and ceo of the leadership conference on civil and human rights spoke about that conversation with the president during a press conference after the meeting. the president focused on issues that are uppermost in the minds of the american people, we talked about questions of economic inequality and focused like a laser on those things
agenda can only go so far if there s an object stin and the congress. you have written about it, a lot written about president obama reframing to get closer to the civil rights or more vocal on issues of race, issues like incarceration. this is sort of part of that narrative, right? is this something that will be well received by critics, really in the african-american community, who have been critical on that area? i think it will be in the african-american community, in part because it is also a shift away from what he has done in his first term and in his earlier political career, sort of a respectability politics approach to the issues, saying yeah, we have these problems, but young people stop i think the exact phrase is stop watching tv and stop playing x box, start reading books. he is not walking away from that, the white house is not walking away at all from that message. he is not walking away from that, but having things that may dress real problems instead of what
opposition, strong opposition. unwillingness to engage with today s civil rights issues shows the same opposition exists. these are contentious issues that people i think are on the wrong side of. everybody wants to get in. we have more as pekts to talk about. .and a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for. action! about.
more than 200 injuries, and two civilian deaths. the swift response from the university and federal law enforcement to an act of desecration against the statue of james meredith is indicative of progress on racial justice in the years since the violent opposition to james meredith, the man. it s progress cemented by landmark legislation that passed just a year after meredith graduated from university of mississippi, and whose 50th anniversary is coming up in july. the civil rights act of 1964. when president lyndon b. johnson signed that bill into law, followed up a year later with the voting rights act of 1965, he put the full power of the federal government behind enforcement of fundamental civil rights. the passage of these laws marked a victory for civil rights activists in the south who after years of hard fought battles, unrelenting resistance, won their fight for an end to discrimination in housing, employment, education, and voting. yet nearly 50 years later when
because early voting is the primary way that churches get people to the polls. how devastating to cut six days off early voting? it will be devastating. it will disenfranchise, suppress hundreds of thousands of folks in the state of ohio, in my city, cincinnati, had black men marching, folks in wheelchairs marching, we had generations with grandmother, granddaughter, with daughter, standing in line to vote. so it would be devastating. we know that the target is minorities and african-americans and students and low income families. we know that there is a movement to cut off the voices of the everyday folks to have an opportunity to vote. that s why ohio legislative black caucus has called for a voter bill of rights to be put in the constitution. no more begging the governor to do the right thing. no more allowing general assemblies to use partisan politics to determine who gets to vote, try to determine what the outcome of elections are.