The House's Prevent Low-Income Americans from Voting Act

Evan Derkacz
October 27, 2005

Yet another sign that we're zigging when we should be zagging. First we're using taxpayer dollars to both reimburse faith-based organizations who helped with Katrina relief. Then, in a little case that Peek readers may recall, the Salvation Army won the right to fire non-Christians (as well as inadequate ones...) while continuing to receive your taxpayer dollars.

Now this, from Bitch Ph.D.: "The House of Representatives is/was supposed to vote today on H.R. 1461, the Housing Finance Reform Act. It supports creation of affordable housing. Good, right?"

"Well, there's a little provision that's been tacked on by the Republican Study Committee to disqualify non-profits from applying for that money if they've engaged in any voter participation activities in the previous year -- including non-partisan registering of voters. In other words, this provision ties funding low-income housing to suppressing low-income voting. According to today's House minutes, it looks like a final vote on the bill has been postponed; do contact your Representative to ask them to pass the bill without the RSC provision attached."

Now how exactly does it make sense to prevent the registration of voters? (Bitch Ph.D.)

--> Sign up for Peek in your inbox... every morning! (Go here and check Peek box).

ACLU By ACLUSponsored

Google This: Algorithmic Oppression

Imagine you've forgotten once again the difference between a gorilla and a chimpanzee, so you do a quick Google image search of “gorilla." But instead of finding images of adorable animals, photos of a Black couple pop up.

Is this just a glitch in the algorithm? Or, is Google an ad company, not an information company, that's replicating the discrimination of the world it operates in? How can this discrimination be addressed and who is accountable for it?

“These platforms are encoded with racism," says UCLA professor and best-selling author of Algorithms of Oppression, Dr. Safiya Noble. “The logic is racist and sexist because it would allow for these kinds of false, misleading, kinds of results to come to the fore…There are unfortunately thousands of examples now of harm that comes from algorithmic discrimination."

On At Liberty this week, Dr. Noble joined us to discuss what she calls “algorithmic oppression," and what needs to be done to end this kind of bias and dismantle systemic racism in software, predictive analytics, search platforms, surveillance systems, and other technologies.

What you can do:
Take the pledge: Systemic Equality Agenda
Sign up