Tuesday, 9/20

CLASS BIZ

• ​If you missed class yesterday, you need to make up the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reading and response questions IN YOUR STARTER GOOGLE DOC!
• Honors-- essay refinements due tomorrow. Also, last day to tell me if you're in or out!

Starter 11: VRA Act Check-in

1. What adjectives best describe your experience trying to read and comprehend the Voting Rights Act?
2. What strategies did you use to help you understand it?  How successful were there?  Are there any strategies that you didn’t use that could have helped?
   

Class Review of VRA Act:  Voting Rights Act Summary and Vocab 

• Let’s go through each section and summarize the main idea(s)
• Which of these sections did you think was most important today? Why?

Some Key Vocab

1. Appeal: apply to a higher court for a reversal of the decision of a lower court
2. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit: One of twelve regional appellate courts within the federal judicial system. The court hears appeals from the nine federal district courts in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and from federal administrative agencies.
3. GOP: Stands for the Grand Old Party, i.e. Republican Party
4. Affirmative Action: an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education; positive discrimination
5. Plaintiff: a person who brings a case against another in a court of law
6. NeoConservatism:  a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among Democrats who became disenchanted with the party's domestic and especially foreign policy. Neoconservatives typically advocate the promotion of democracy and promotion of American national interest in international affairs, including by means of military force and are known for espousing disdain for communism and for political radicalism.
7. Congressional Districts (Colorado)
8. Gerrymandering: manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class

Ashley to post the map of U.S. with stats on how to vote in each state and show the embedded video above IF internet is working.

Read this Washington Post article about North Carolina’s recent voting law controversy and jot down notes on the following questions to inform our class seminar:

1. What are the various arguments FOR and AGAINST North Carolina’s Voter ID Laws?
2. Which pieces of evidence in this article are more convincing to you and most inform your position?
3. Summarize, to the best of your ability, the legislative and judicial processes that have been involved in shaping North Carolina’s voting laws since 2010.  What questions do you have about those processes?
   
   

Listen to and take notes on this Radiolab, More Perfect, “Imperfect Plaintiffs”-- start at 31:30 into the show. Take notes on the following questions to help you pull out key ideas from this podcast:

1. What did Edward Bloom and his wife discover about districts when they were campaigning?
2. What was Bloom’s “beef” with the way districts were created?
3. What was Plessy v. Ferguson?
4. What was the Supreme Court’s ruling on the NAACP v. Virginia case on manufacturing litigation?

Small Group  Discussion
In your small groups, carry out a mini-seminar on the following questions:

1. Is Edward Bloom vs. 40,000 civil rights activists marching in the street a false paradigm?
2. Is Edward Bloom carrying the standard for Civil Rights in America?  To what extent?
3. Do you agree that manufacturing legislation should be counted as a form of freedom of expression?
4. Is this a legitimate pathway to contend with the problem of the Tyranny of the Majority?
5. Where do you stand on the issues outlined in the Washington Post article about voter discrimination? To what extent should states have voter ID laws? What kind? (Click on this map of the  U.S. that explains how to vote in each state for more ideas on the types of laws various states require. Scope out ColoRADo obviously).
6. Is it time for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to end? Is it no longer needed?