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Hamza Nazir, SD27
Forsyth County is the richest county in Georgia, yet we lack critical healthcare resources and our voters are under attack. The time for change is now and if elected, I will address head on several issues voters care about: Address our community’s growing mental health crisis by working to secure funding and resources, since our own county commissioners diverted needed federal funds. Create a healthier Georgia by increasing funding and access to quality healthcare and fighting for women’s healthcare rights, including IVF. Counter voter suppression occurring across the state because voters need to know their votes count. My opponent Greg Dolezal was a primary sponsor of SB 189, which increases voter suppression by making it easier to challenge voter registrations. I will fight for free and fair elections in the state of Georgia, so that all citizens have the ability to practice their right to vote and support the issues most important to them.
On Tue Jul 16 at 9am join the Special Called Meeting at the Board of Voter Registrations and Elections (BRE) to hear more voter registration challenges being made–it’s vital that county residents are present to demonstrate that these challenges are not needed. The BRE is located at 1201 Sawnee Drive.
Sign the Southern Environmental Law Center’s (SELC) petition to ask President Biden to provide federal protection to the Okefenokee Swamp on the SELC site. Sign up to be a poll watcher in November! Be a part of the process of making sure everyone gets to vote! Many of you have reached out to the Forsyth Dems expressing concern about the recent Supreme Court decision granting immunity to Donald Trump and placing him above the law for his “official” acts. We share your concern—our Democracy and personal freedoms are at stake, and we must act. Our remedy is at the ballot box, and we must work and vote for candidates who will defend Democracy, not plan insurrections to undermine it.
Together we can stop authoritarianism from taking over the White House and from taking our individual freedoms and protections. It has always been, and always will be, up to the American people to come together through uncertain times to create our own future. We can do this! Do not be discouraged and do not lose hope of a better, stronger country for all. Now is the time to join your local county committee. We all fear a future where Donald Trump feels unrestrained even by the rule of law, where he is not held accountable for his crimes. Let’s mobilize those around us, awaken them to the dangers that face our nation and our neighborhoods together. Forsyth Dems have a candidate running in almost every single local race, they need your help! This summer and fall, we are writing postcards, phone and text banking, holding sign-waving rallies, knocking on doors, and showing up at community events. And if you can’t volunteer with us right now, donate to help volunteers on the ground today. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing. Do something today! And remember, while you are only one and cannot do everything, you can do something. Join us at forsythdemocrats.org! Volunteer Join Forsyth Dems Donate Meet the Candidates
Did You Know, the Supreme Court:
If Trump becomes President, it is quite likely at least 2 Supreme Court Justices will retire, opening the door for the nomination of younger right-wing justices that will be on the Court for 30 to 40 years.
It is the president who nominates the Supreme Court justices and the Senate that confirms them. We must ensure democrats come out ahead in each. In this issue of the Kicker, we highlight the Supreme Court rulings that set the stage for where we are in 2024, with supermajorities in the legislatures, activist state AGs, dark money funding campaigns and influencing legislation, and constant efforts to suppress the vote. In future editions we will show how their latest rulings affect all of us and change how the government functions. Dark money enters politics: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) A conservative nonprofit group called Citizens United challenged campaign finance rules after the FEC stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton too close to the presidential primaries. A 5–4 majority of the Supreme Court sided with Citizens United, ruling that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections. In the court’s opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that limiting “independent political spending” from corporations and other groups violates the First Amendment right to free speech. The justices who voted with the majority assumed that independent spending cannot be corrupt and that the spending would be transparent, but both assumptions have proven to be incorrect. With its decision, the Supreme Court overturned election spending restrictions that dated back more than 100 years. Previously, the court had upheld certain spending restrictions, arguing that the government had a role in preventing corruption. But in Citizens United, a bare majority of the justices held that “independent political spending” did not present a substantive threat of corruption, provided it was not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. As a result, corporations and wealthy individuals can now spend unlimited funds on campaign advertising if they are not formally “coordinating” with a candidate or political party. Igniting voter suppression efforts by striking at the heart of the Voting Rights Act: Shelby County v Holder (2013). The Supreme Court effectively struck at the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, freeing nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval. The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and the nation’s progress in rooting out racial discrimination in voting. At the core of the disagreement was whether racial minorities continued to face barriers to voting in states (like Georgia) with a history of discrimination. “Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” The Supreme Court declared that racial discrimination in voting was a thing of the past and gutted the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. With that invitation, at least 94 restrictive voting laws have been passed across 29 states in the years since. The protections won by advocates like John Lewis have been systematically weakened, putting the freedom to vote in jeopardy. The majority held that the coverage formula in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, originally passed in 1965 and updated by Congress in 1975, was unconstitutional. The section had determined which states must receive clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones, like redrawing electoral districts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from the bench, stating the focus of the Voting Rights Act had properly changed from “first-generation barriers to ballot access” to “second-generation barriers” like racial gerrymandering and laws requiring at-large voting in places with a sizable black minority. She said the law had been effective in thwarting such efforts. Setting the stage for minority rule by allowing gerrymandering: Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) In a 5-4 decision along traditional conservative-liberal ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan redistricting is a political question — not reviewable by federal courts — and that those courts can't judge if extreme gerrymandering violates the Constitution. The ruling puts the onus on the legislative branch, and on individual states, to police redistricting efforts. "We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts," Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the conservative majority. "Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions." Roberts noted that excessive partisanship in the drawing of districts does lead to results that "reasonably seem unjust," but he said that does not mean it is the court's responsibility to find a solution. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan blasted the five conservative justices. She accused them of abdicating their duties with a “tragically wrong” decision that would have disastrous consequences for American democracy. “Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent.” This has led to extreme gerrymandering; The Supreme Court has declined to put boundaries on gerrymandering unless it’s explicitly race-based. The United States is the only advanced democracy that allows such gerrymandering; it means there are fewer competitive congressional districts, and thus fewer lawmakers are incentivized for bipartisan compromise. The GOP takes control of State Legislatures, Secretaries of State, State AGs, Local Government, then Congress. Owing to the Supreme Court rulings detailed above, state legislatures began to gerrymander local and federal districts while at the same time taking steps to restrict and suppress votes in non-GOP districts. This further consolidated GOP control within the states, creating super majorities in state legislatures and resulting in representation in the U.S. House that’s out of sync with voting demographics. This, in turn, has allowed representatives to act in ways unaccountable to their broader constituency. The GOP has worked to elect like-minded Secretaries of State and Attorneys General, which sets the stage for state officials to carry out voter suppression measures. This includes taking greater control of the election process and enforcing far-right policies, such as abortion bans. The 2020 election challenges and promotion of the Stop the Steal movement highlighted this fact and, in 2024, the efforts to control the outcome of the election are likely to be even more sophisticated and far reaching.
District 1 Commissioner Kerry Hill, District 2 Alfred John (Chairman) and District 5 Laura Semanson voted against the facility. Hill claimed that a “state-operated mental health crisis center is not the most effective use of Forsyth County ARPA funds, as the facility would be open to people outside Forsyth County.” Commissioners Levent (District 3) and Mills (District 4) voted against the redirection. The county then invited the stakeholder group to present to the BOC on June 25.
“The Board pulled our only known source of [funding]…and did not give us a commitment for the amount we have to work with,” said mental health advocate and key stakeholder group member Mary Schaffer, vice president of the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). At the June 25 meeting, the county manager reviewed three possible concepts for developing a facility not far from the Northside Hospital in Cumming. All would require public private partnership funding, whereas the use of federal funds would not have. Commissioner Mills presented statistics from Northside Hospital that illustrated how stark is the need for care: the number of residents in need of urgent mental health in the last two years alone, as recorded by the number of people brought to the hospital:
Community stakeholders have worked for years to get the county to address the marked increase in residents suffering serious mental health problems. Without a county-centered crisis intervention facility, families and friends of loved ones are forced to drive hours to other counties in Georgia that offer both inpatient and outpatient crisis care. People who are suicidal or in crisis do not have the luxury of traveling hours for care. Currently, all members of the BOC are Republican. Two seats are contested by Democrats this November: District 4, Kat Jewell and District 5, Cary Green. View our Candidates page here.
Of those, 197 were already canceled, 531 are on schedule to be removed and only 14 remained–all a result of the state’s routine roll maintenance. The Board reviewed another 45 challenges after conducting a line-by-line review.
Mr. Bartelski promotes the use of Eagle AI (variously pronounced as “AI” or “Eye”). He brought with him Eagle AI creator Rick Richards, who insists his methods are superior to existing national and state systems created by elections professionals. Also present was Jason Frazier, known to be one of the chief challengers in Fulton County, as well as Senator Greg Dolezal (R–SD27). Others in attendance were representatives from the ACLU, who were quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, as was Democratic Board of Registration and Election representative Anita Tucker. As mentioned in the May 30th edition of the Kicker, this represents an on-going effort by MAGA elements of the GOP to call into question the election and to disenfranchise voters who typically vote Democratic. The Associated Press filmed the meeting and published an excellent article summarizing the challenge effort and highlighting that the software is “funded and used by supporters of Trump… and entwined with the Republican’s campaign.”
From Michael Henson, running for HD28:
"The Supreme Court of the United States has handed down a series of decisions over the past week that will impact all Americans. The court struck down a ban on bump stocks making mass shootings potentially more deadly. Overturning the 1984 Chevron deference which in effect will hamstring Federal Agencies from implementing rules and regulations that are designed to protect the environment, financial markets consumers and the workplace. Today, the Supreme court ruled that a President is immune from prosecution from "official acts" without defining what constitutes official and unofficial acts. What we've learned from these decisions is that this right-wing court has shown that they are not pro-life, do not care for the environment, consumers, or their workplace, and that ONE man is "above the law.” |
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