Janai Nelson
LDF 8th President & Director-Counsel
Janai Nelson serves as the 8th President and Director-Counsel at LDF, a distinguished organization with a long-standing commitment to advancing civil rights in the United States. With a robust background in law and advocacy, Nelson has emerged as a pivotal leader in the fight against systemic racism and inequality. Her tenure at LDF has been marked by a passionate dedication to various critical issues, including the protection of voting rights, where she has worked tirelessly to combat voter suppression and ensure equal access to the polls for all citizens. Additionally, Nelson has focused on reforming the criminal justice system to address disparities that disproportionately affect communities of color.
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We do not see ourselves as victims. We see ourselves as agents in our own change, and we see ourselves as having as much a stake in this country as any other. We are in the roots and soil of this nation, and we have a responsibility to ensure that it is everything it can be for everyone who resides here. We serve the people. We were birthed by the atrocities happening in the early part of the 20th century, and our work is not yet done.
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The question is, what do you do with this moment? What do you do in a moment when people are paying attention? When many people want to be part of a solution, when young people are activated and engaged and in some instances, rightfully angry. The power of now is that this moment, while it feels I think, for many Americans, very uncomfortable, even scary for some, is actually a moment of tremendous opportunity. The power of now speaks to the moment that we're in. It is a call to action. It's a subpoena, if you will. It commands that all of us show up to respond to the promise of this moment and leverage what is a new and in many ways more challenging dialogue about race in this country.
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Most people don't recognize the silent force of protection that the Voting Rights Act provided. The Voting Rights Act has ensured that some of the most discriminatory laws in this country never came to pass. The Shelby County decision meant that now jurisdictions all over the country could make whatever voting changes they wanted to. These problems have not been consigned to history. They continue to exist. Their effects are real. They are of today, not yesterday, and they corrode the foundations of our democracy. In one county in Georgia, the jurisdiction proposed to close all but two of their 24 polling places and to move those two into the police station. In another jurisdiction, they decided to close three of the four polling places in the African American community, requiring voters to travel 25 miles to cast a ballot. Texas, for example, has one of the most stringent photo identification laws in the country, and every federal court to have examined that law has held that it discriminates against Black and Latino Texans. In Texas, the voter ID law requires voters to present a valid picture ID before casting ballots in state and local elections. The Texas law was passed in 2011 but was put on hold after a court found it discriminated against minorities. There was redistricting happening in the transformation of town councils and school boards that were removing seats just as African Americans had been able to elect a candidate of their choice. Groups are suing over a law that took effect this year in North Carolina, requiring photo ID to vote in person, eliminating same day registration and reducing the number of early voting days. Those groups appealed an April ruling that went against their case. Many of you may have seen in the primary election this year in Arizona the long lines that people were in for six and seven hours, all because the state had decided to close 70 polling places. Nothing stopped them from doing it. And we saw it in Wisconsin, and we saw it in Alabama, and we saw it in South Carolina. And so all of these changes began to happen right after the Shelby County decision. I think many people don't recognize that this is the first presidential election in 50 years without the full provisions of the Voting Rights Act. We haven't seen a landscape like this in half a century.
