Generous exposure to the intricacies of systemic racism in these last few months leaves one unsurprised that 1 in every 13 Black Americans "has lost their voting rights due to felony disenfranchisement laws". We know that people of color disproportionately comprise Incarcerated peoples within the U.S. prison system. This is not a reflection of a particular race’s capacity to commit crimes. The Prison-Industrial Complex is a continuation of the enslavement of Black people dating back to the inception of this country. Non-Black Americans cannot empower the Black community fully without restoring their voting rights and abolishing prisons.

        Systemic racism is inherent to the structure of our government and society. White colonizers stole the land we live on, murdered Indigenous populations, and imported Black slaves into the "New World" to build the foundation of their occupation. Today, the ancestors of Indigenous and Black people experience the modernity of colonization and racism through the annexation of land and withholding of resources. These groups are further marginalized by way of coerced sterilization, environmental racism, mass incarceration, and countless other modes of oppression. Change requires research. In researching, we take agency in decolonizing our minds and hearts. 

        Maine, Vermont, and Washington D.C. have resisted the status quo by allowing their incarcerated citizens the right to vote (The Sentencing Project). This is an incredible triumph but we cannot let this placate us, rather, let it fuel us to restore voter rights everywhere. The fact is, this shouldn't have been written into law in the first place. We shouldn't have sat idly while the government stripped its people of their humanity. How can we say that slavery is over when such a significant percentage of Black Americans are prohibited from participating in the politics that govern their selfhood?    

        We must also acknowledge and rectify fraud conducted by way of the census. While incarcerated people serve their sentences in cages far from their homes, they are also included in the populations of the towns these prisons exist within. This has been the protocol since the first U.S. census in 1790 (NPR). As prisons are for-profit institutions, there is strategic value in building them in small, majority-white areas that benefit from this inflation of voting power. The Prison Policy Initiative exemplifies this: "if a district contains 10,000 people and 2,000 of them are prisoners (who are counted in the Census, but have no say in elections) the interests of the remaining 8,000 people form their elected official's mandate." This is yet another insidious facet of our flawed governmental system.