From the Economic Policy Institute (http://www.epi.org/):
Last week our nation honored the memory of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King devoted his life to fighting for an inclusive, economically and socially just society, and central to that vision was a political system where people of all races, genders, and economic conditions could freely vote together for leaders who serve the common good.
Labor unions were a critical part of the movement for civil and voting rights in the 1960s and remain so today. So, perhaps it’s not surprising to find that states with high levels of unionization are also the least likely to pass laws that deny or hinder the right to vote, as shown in the figure below. In contrast, 70 percent of low-union-density states passed at least one voter suppression law between 2011 and 2019.
Unions have, both historically and in the present, been central to the fight to protect voting rights. Dr. King understood that the fight for civil rights and the fight for economic justice were in fact, two sides of the same fight, and that the right to vote was key to winning.
If you believe that voting rights are central to economic justice, then please help us spread the word by sharing our chart of the week with your networks.
Leave a Reply