Civil Rights

Our Senators must act now to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the landmark achievement in the movement to end violence against
women and girls. VAWA revolutionized the way violent crimes against women are prosecuted and prevented, reshaped the way victims receive services and transformed the way communities respond to survivors.

Authored by then-Senator Joseph Biden and signed into law in 1994, VAWA was the first federal legislation to acknowledge domestic violence and sexual
assault as crimes. It created the first federal funding stream to support rape crisis centers across the country. VAWA provided federal resources to
encourage coordinated community responses to combating violence, and it saved money while saving lives: nearly $12.6 billion in averted social costs in its first six years alone.

I carry no brief for Florida Rep. Allen West—as I wrote just last week for The Root, the Republican congressman’s recent cheap shot at his Democratic colleagues, describing “78 to 81” of them as “communist” at a constituent town hall meeting—was, among other things, “just plain lazy.” The pander hearkened back to the ‘50s-era scare-politics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and sent a message to constituents that they needn’t take him seriously—because thus far, he’s long on insults and woefully short on solutions.
 
But if West is lazy, then—frankly—so is the Martin County, Florida chapter of the NAACP: because just like West’s constituents should be able to expect more out of him, the members of the local NAACP should be able to expect that their leadership won’t cut off access to West—or any other politician who’s looking to engage them.
 
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what they did.

Today (April 24), the Institute for Economics and Peace released the second annual U.S. Peace Index, which assesses America’s peacefulness at the state and city levels and analyzes the costs associated with violence and the socio-economic measures associated with peace.
 
So just how peaceful is America?  

It may come as a surprise but over the past 20 years, America has become substantially more peaceful, witnessing a significant and sustained reduction in direct violence.  Homicide rates in the U.S. have halved since 1991 and the violent crime rate has also fallen by nearly half during the same period. The state level trends are also very encouraging. 42 states reduced their violent crime rates, and 13 out of 16 Southern states increased their peacefulness.

As the only statistical analysis that offers a comprehensive nation-wide measurement of crime and its costs to the 50 states, the U.S. Peace Index is based on analysis of homicide, violent crime, policing, incarceration rates and availability of small arms data. With improvements in all five of these indicators from the 2011 to the 2012 USPI, the U.S. was found to be more peaceful than at any time since 1991.

Which part of America is most and least peaceful?

The bill to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) faces a likely vote in the Senate next week, but its provisions that would assist immigrant women who are victims of violence have drawn some inexplicable opposition. The country’s single most important law for addressing domestic abuse, sexual violence, and stalking has offered life-saving protections to immigrant women since it first passed in 1994.
 
Leaving a violent relationship is not easy for anyone. Abusers may threaten death or harm to children. For some women, escaping violence means risking poverty and homelessness.  Immigrant women who lack authorization to live in the US face additional threats. Before VAWA, abusers were able to manipulate immigration law and make it into an unwitting accomplice to acts of violence against thousands of immigrant women every year.

A trusting widow, swindled by a smooth-talking loan shark, suddenly faces eviction from the home she’s owned for decades. An injured veteran caught in bureaucratic red tape is denied services he needs and has earned. A fearful mother stays in an abusive relationship because the alternatives seem worse.  These disturbing situations are all-too common in our great country. Without appropriate legal expertise, many of them have unjust endings.
 
The good news is, legal assistance is available to help with issues like these for many vulnerable, low-income Americans. Civil legal assistance programs funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) are located in every state and are great public-private partnerships, obtaining, on average, more than half of their support from non-federal sources together with significant donations of time from private attorneys.

In Maryland, an elderly mother averts foreclosure despite being swindled by her signature-forging daughter who secretly refinances her mother's home.  A Washington mother and child escape an abusive spouse and a suspected child molester. Texas families get the disaster recovery help they need and the chance to rebuild their lives.

Facing these real-life circumstances, a victim of identity theft, a domestic violence survivor and families left with nothing turned to their local legal aid providers for free advice and representation. These cases are typical, but by no means exclusive of the type of work legal aid programs can offer.  Veterans receive their deserved benefits thanks to legal aid. The elderly are protected from exploitation. The dignity of the disabled is preserved.

The federal government supports local legal aid programs through the Legal Services Corporation. Established by President Richard Nixon, LSC helps to meet the needs of 63 million qualifying Americans-including 22 million children-who live below or near the poverty line. Those providers helped close nearly one million cases benefiting 2.3 million people last year. While that number is impressive, research has shown-and legal aid advocates will tell you-that about half of applicants are turned away for lack of funding. The need is simply too overwhelming.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s first hearing on racial profiling since 9/11 took place today, in the shadow of teenager Trayvon Martin’s killing and allegations that race played a role in his death and in its investigation. The struggle to eliminate racial bias, not only from policing but also from how Americans view and treat one another, is a longstanding and familiar one. But at today’s hearing, there will be a new and unwelcome guest at the table: religious profiling. 
 
Racial profiling absorbed Americans’ attention in the late 1990s when empirical studies established what black and Hispanic Americans had long-known: cops often selected drivers or pedestrians to stop and question based on race or ethnicity. The studies also showed that this discrimination didn’t help the police. The odds of finding illegal substances were roughly the same for targeted minorities and for whites. 

The wage gap issue has been front and center this month. On April 17, we marked another Equal Pay Day—the symbolic point at which a woman’s salary finally caught up to her male counterpart’s from the preceding year. Before that, we heard a Wisconsin state senator say it was “arguable” that money was more important for men than women, and we saw the repeal of that state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act.
 
Wisconsin’s old law was intended to discourage discrimination by allowing cases to be filed in state court where harsher penalties acted as stronger deterrents than those in federal courts that rely on anemic 50 year old laws. Before that 2009 state law was passed, Wisconsin ranked 36th in pay gap statistics. One year after its passage, the state moved up to 24th. Progress was being made!
 
No wonder they repealed it.


On New Year’s Eve, the president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2012 Fiscal Year (NDAA). Within it were some very troubling provisions that address how our armed forces handle detainees. Proponents of the bill declared that America was now the “battlefield” in the war on terror, and that there may be “enemy combatants” among us that should be picked up and detained by the military without an opportunity to face charge or trial.



Americans from across the political spectrum were rightly furious and dismayed.

I’m a life-long Democrat who is exceptionally proud of our party. I had the tremendous honor of serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee under President Bill Clinton. The values of the Democratic Party are central to who I am—treating every American the way we all want to be treated, looking out to ensure that the American Dream is available to all. 

From my vantage point, today’s most crucial civil and human rights battle is how we treat our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens. Doing the right thing here is at the core of what our Party should stand for. That’s why I am joining Freedom to Marry, 22 Democratic senators, Leader Nancy Pelosi, and more than 35,000 Americans in urging the Party to include a freedom to marry plank in the platform that will be ratified at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this September.