Lawsuit: Detroit suburb denies blacks equal voting rights

[TexasTowelie]

DETROIT — The Justice Department is suing a Detroit suburb, alleging that it violates the Voting Rights Act by denying black residents an equal opportunity to elect city council members of their choice.

The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Detroit, says no black candidate has ever served on the Eastpointe City Council and that white voters have consistently opposed and defeated black voters’ preferred black candidates. It seeks a court order that would force Eastpointe to change how its city council is elected. It currently consists of the mayor and four council members who serve staggered four-year terms.

Of the 32,000 people living in Eastpointe in 2010, nearly 10,000 were black, according to the U.S. Census. Current estimates place the city’s black population at closer to 40 percent.

Eastpointe’s black voters consistently vote for black city council and school board candidates, however none of them have ever been elected, the lawsuit contends.

Read more: http://www.toledoblade.com/Nation/2017/01/11/Lawsuit-Detroit-suburb-Eastpointe-denies-blacks-equal-voting-rights.html

[guillaumeb]

1. Coincidence?

I am certain that soon to be AG Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions will vigorously prosecute this one.

[Raster]

3. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-attorney-general-racism_us_58751865e4b099cdb0ffb10a

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Says His Name Is Why People Think He’s Racist

It’s not his weak record on civil rights or being denied a judgeship after allegedly calling a black attorney “boy.”

WASHINGTON ― Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions lamented Tuesday that some people have accused him of being racist, guessing it’s been a theme in his career in part because of where he’s from and because of his formal name: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

“You have a Southern name. You come from south Alabama,” he said during his Senate confirmation hearing. “That sounds worse to some people, south Alabama.”

<snip>

But there are substantive reasons that Sessions, who was Alabama’s attorney general and is now a U.S. senator, is taking heat on civil rights. He supported gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013. He has a record of blocking black judicial nominees. He unsuccessfully prosecuted black civil rights activists for voter fraud in 1985 ― including a former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr. A year later, he was rejected for a federal judgeship over allegations he called a black attorney “boy,” suggested a white lawyer working for black clients was a race traitor and referred to civil rights groups as “un-American” and trying to “force civil rights down the throats of people who were trying to put problems behind them.”

Sessions denied Tuesday that he’s ever been racist. “I did not harbor the kind of animosity and race-based discrimination ideas I was accused of,” he said. “I did not.”

<snip,more>

Yesiree, it's all because of his name, not his record, his name.

[guillaumeb]

4. Named for two Confederate............ heroes(?)

Well-named, in my view.

[Raster]

5. Named for two Southern traitors that rebelled against the Union.

[putitinD]

2. Eastpointe is like 70% black