http://themilitant.com/2018/8206/820620.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 6 February 12, 2018
(editorial)
Oppose curbs on prisoners, right to vote!
The fight to overturn restrictions that prevent over 6 million people
who had been convicted of a felony from voting is of central importance
to the working class. A quarter of those are in Florida, where
volunteers gathered almost 800,000 signatures to put removing the
state’s ban on former prisoners’ right to vote on the ballot this year.
Restrictions on voting rights of felons hit workers, who are the big
majority of the prison population, the hardest. And they fall
disproportionately on workers who are Black.
Workers behind bars are no different from fellow workers outside prison
walls. We are all part of the working class and confront the same
political and moral crisis of capitalism. Prisoners are an integral part
of our class’s battle to overturn capitalist rule and take political
power into our own hands.
The U.S. rulers imprison more working people than any other country in
the world. They face restrictions on what they can read, and conditions
geared to assault their dignity. Thousands are thrown in solitary
confinement. And then the rulers bar their right to vote when they get out.
Establishing the right of workers to vote has a long history that
includes fighting to end property qualifications after the revolutionary
ouster of the British colonists; extending the franchise to Blacks after
the second American Revolution overthrew slavery; and winning women’s
suffrage in 1920 after more than 70 years of protests.
It took a massive proletarian Black-led civil rights movement to destroy
Jim Crow segregation and win passage of the Voting Rights Act. This
struggle led to winning the vote for 18 year olds.
Many among the propertied rulers saw in the workers who voted for Donald
Trump the harbinger of class battles to come. These workers, disgusted
by the effects of today’s capitalist crisis, are looking for something
new. One of the rulers’ responses has been to look for new ways to
diminish workers’ votes.
Fights like the one in Florida today to push back restrictions on the
franchise are an important part of advancing the unity and fighting
capacity of the working class.
Related articles:
Fight for voting rights of former prisoners makes gains in Florida
After 44 years in prison, Herman Bell fights for release on parole
Fla. paper reports ‘Militant’ victory on prison censorship
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