This is not the diary I was planning to do as a fundraiser on behalf of the life changing work done by DocDawg and his amazing insightus team.
I was going to write about insightus’ crucial work that helped overturn North Carolina’s draconian voter suppression law two weeks ago. The 4th Circuit Court could not have been clearer on why.
...Thus, in what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race —specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise.
These contextual facts, which reveal the powerful undercurrents influencing North Carolina politics, must be considered in determining why the General Assembly enacted SL2013-381. Indeed, the law’s purpose cannot be properly understood without these considerations. The record makes clear that the historical origin of the challenged provisions in this statute is not the innocuous back-and-forth of routine partisan struggle that the State suggests and that the district court accepted. Rather, the General Assembly enacted them in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. The district court clearly erred in ignoring or dismissing this historical background evidence, all of which supports a finding of discriminatory intent….One of the key factors for the 4th Circuit Court’s finding was the mind bending, science the shit out of it, work of DocDawg and the insightus team.
insightus Update 1 (June 9, 2015):
Subsequent to the publication of this report in Daily Kos, plaintiffs in NC-NAACP v. McCrory — the landmark Federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina's voter suppression law — engaged an expert witness to re-analyze the data we uncovered and validate our findings. That witness's report was entered into evidence in NC-NAACP v. McCrory on June 9, 2015. Regarding this evidence, plaintiffs' attorneys opined:
...analysis of the substantial decline in voter registrations through public assistance offices is highly relevant to the Plaintiffs’ claims, including, in particular, those relating to North Carolina’s elimination of same-day registration. Specifically, as part of their defense as to why the elimination of same-day registration does not burden African American and Latino voters, the Defendants have argued that certain State agencies offer voter registration services such that the voters have an equal opportunity to register, even without same-day registration [....]This data confirms that—contrary to the State’s representations—voter registrations at public assistance offices have not been a reasonable alternative to same-day registration for minority voters.
insightus Update 2:
In response to our original publication of this report in Daily Kos on May 7th, voting rights organizations including Demos and Democracy NC sent the NC State Board of Elections a warning lettera on May 8th demanding immediate action to bring North Carolina back into comliance with the National Voter Registration Act. Following another six months of inaction on the state's part, those organizations filed a lawsuit against the state in U.S. District Court on December 15, 2015.
Then this morning, the latest insightus report was released. DocDawgs’ phone is “ringing off the hook” and their server is “melting down.” I expect that to continue. The insightus report is devastating to a Republican controlled North Carolina government that attempted to bury mounting evidence on the uranium poisoning of over 400,000 people’s water. Needless to say, it is also alarming to the hundreds of thousands who were denied crucial information about the safety of the water they use to drink, cook, and bathe in. Millions more could be affected.
North Carolina's Next Hot Mess The untold story of uranium-contaminated water in the state capital's suburbs (and why no one knows about it) 8 August 2016 8:40 AM US Eastern For six years, North Carolina health officials have quietly documented toxic levels of radioactive uranium in well water across a wide swath of Wake County, the seat of state government. Yet throughout their investigation those officials failed to grasp the scope of this public health threat. Meanwhile, state legislators mauled the budget of the public health agency which should have been empowered to discover and address this crisis of which the public remains unaware.The number of North Carolinians at risk of uranium poisoning is at least 400,000 across the northeastern Piedmont. But because of the top-to-bottom failure of good government we detail in this exclusive Insightus investigation, it remains unknown how many more of the state’s 3.5 million residents who drink, cook and bathe with private well water may also be at risk….insight-us.org/...
There is more and I highly recommend reading the full report. It is damning, as it should be. DocDawg and his insightus team are scientists and data driven. They dig deep, checking and re-checking the data. Lives are on the line and they know it. Their work must be above reproach in order to be taken seriously and have affect.
They need our help to do so. insightus is an all volunteer organization where people work long hours on top of their jobs and family commitments. They need more volunteers to help them harnesses the 21st Century technology of data science to promote a just, civil, democratic and sustainable world. And they’d deeply appreciate financial help for everything from pencils, paper, to keeping their web site and server up and running.
Please contribute what you can to DocDawg and the insightus team, not only to thank them for such important work, but to also support the work still to come. For there will be more battles to fight and we need them to do what they do best.
If you would like to learn more about what DocDawg and his stalwart team have and are doing in their ongoing fight for Justice, Equality, and a Sustainable World, here is the link to their website — insightus
And if you would like to make a donation to this wonderful organization, here is the link to their donation page — insight-us.org/...
If you would prefer to send a check, please let me know through kosmail. I will get the address to you.
If you have a few hours a week that you’d like to spend volunteering for insightus, they could really use the help. There are internships positions available as well that would look very good on a resume. Go to their website for further information — insight-us.org/…
Perhaps if we help fund them enough, they could reach the point of having paid positions. We’ve done just that for Daily Kos. We can surely do so again.
if you can’t help financially, no guilt allowed. You can still help by spreading the word about insightus through social media and to your family and friends. It all matters, including sharing insightus’ new report.
Just like Michigan, North Carolina’s Republican led Government has knowingly put peoples’ lives at risk. We are all Flint now.
Without insightus’ invaluable work, no one would know. The hiding of crucial information by elected officials would have continued. Let us do everything we can to support insightus’ efforts.