Print 
PDFFrom In These Times:
According to the report, there is a clear method to the way the restrictions have been imposed. They’ve become law primarily in states “with large communities of color where political participations has surged.” To put it bluntly, they’re aimed at suppressing the black vote.
The good news is that this campaign to curtail voting rights is sparking an increase in political activism and engagement by African-American churches, whose organizing muscle will play an important role in the 2012 election. Over the longer term, these institutions might also become key players in a coalition of progressive activists.
The seeds of a new era of activism are evident, for example, in the embrace of the Occupy movement by some prominent black religious leaders.
Among the most prominent is Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant, who is now pastor of the Empowerment Temple megachurch in Baltimore and was formerly the national youth director for the NAACP. In January, an article in the Washington Post noted the growing ties between Occupy D.C. and the city’s African-American pastors, including Bryant. On Martin Luther King Day, pastors across the U.S. coordinated with the Occupy movement to hold protests at ten Federal Reserve Banks.
More recently, Bryant and other religious leaders have been promoting the Empowerment Movement, which is a voting initiative that takes direct aim at the GOP’s anti-voting efforts. It aimed to register 1 million African-American voters on Easter by encouraging the nation’s estimated 50,000 African-American churches to hold a registration drive. The campaign has the support of several denominational bodies, and the drive will continue this spring.
(9)