In January 2017, the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) released “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,” its report evaluating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.  The report provided a strategic autopsy which explored the mechanics and escalation of cyber-espionage and covert operations orchestrated by a Russian-controlled propaganda apparatus. 

In 2018, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, an organization that conducts research and analysis on transatlantic issues, published “Policy Blueprint for Countering Authoritarian Interference in Democracies,” presenting the multi-institutional implications of social media chicanery.

After analyzing the contents of the two documents, I have identified six key themes which threaten our fealty to the spirit of democracy and social justice.  Additionally, these tactics seek to establish an authoritarian-democratic, white supremist regime by manipulating and dismantling access to the electoral process.     

1. Last Place Aversion: The absence of oversight in social media and a polarized social environment have become fertile ground for extremists to exploit and manipulate the social divisions and economic anxiety of voters.  Since we are living in a contentious and suspicious environment of declining trust for many of the established social institutions, foreign social media interlopers nurtured the fears of citizens who feel that the American Dream of upward mobility has eluded them.  The accelerated pace of demographic and cultural changes is perceived as a threat to America’s future and a barrier to opportunities that were once easily accessible to them.

2. Psychological Suppression: The tactics utilized by these foreign social media manipulators is what I would describe as political catfishing.  In social media, catfishing is a tactic used by predators who create a false persona to entice and entrap readers into a manipulative relationship.  For these political tricksters, they adopt the profiles of known personalities and influencers to infect the confidence of voters, thus suppress voter participation and engagement.

   By hijacking the mission of activist groups such as Black Lives Matter, elected officials and known personalities, they wove together a digital quilt of misinformation and confusion to depress trust, communication and participation in the political process.  This tactic was verified in an investigation by USA Today Network reporters who confirmed that of the 3,500 Facebook ads created by the Internet Research Agency, an internet troll agency based in Russia, 1,950 of those ads made references to race and exploited issues such as the NFL anthem protests.  The report also revealed these divisive racial ads averaged 44 per month and increased as the November election approached.

3. Not Just an American Dilemma: The article is a warning that foreign interference in elections is not confined to America but a threat to all democracies.  Lacking the technical infrastructure and regulation to monitor their nefarious activities, the American electoral process remains exposed to further interference. These manipulators have their sights set on permanently impregnating the foundation of democracy with misinformation and distrust to activate voter suppression and non-participation. 
4. Enhanced Resources: Curtailing foreign interference will require multi-institutional, public-private coordination and international cooperation and communication. Due to the fact that the international actors perpetuating this interference have unlimited resources, the United States and its allies must strategically commit to a long-term strategy with sufficient financial and technical resources to successfully neutralize this threat.
5. Voter Fraud Does Not Exist: The myth of voter fraud is not supported by facts.  In “More UFO Sightings Than Voter Fraud,” a March 2012 article in Mother Jones magazine, the author revealed the following:

Between 2000 and 2010, there were:

• 649 million votes cast in general elections;
• 47,000 UFO sightings;
• 441 Americans killed by lightning; and

• 13 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation.

  Magnifying the voter fraud theme reinforces the post-slavery doctrine that African Americans are a menace to democracy and, therefore, must be controlled or excluded.

1. Elections Have Consequences: Behind the mask of voter suppression exists the toxic drug of paralysis whose goal is to activate indifference and apathy in an attempt to convert the electoral process into a partisan activity for extremists.  By restricting voter participation, the antagonists of inclusion fulfill their deceitful goals under the disguise of democracy.

Voter suppression tactics impact more than the results of one election but the implementation of a leadership succession plan and policies contrary to our values and interests as a nation.  For example, since taking office, Donald Trump has nominated 177 individuals to federal judgeships, of which 91 have been confirmed to lifetime appointments.  Their potential decisions on cases involving voting rights, the environment, sexual assault, consumer protection and criminal justice—to name a few—can have vulgar implications on past progress and protections received for the next 40 to 60 years.

Finally, the continued interference by these authoritarian regimes has severe implications on communities of color and the historically disenfranchised.  By suppressing access to one of our basic civil rights, these foreign threats represent what I describe as “digital terrorists”, advocating the divisiveness and vitriol of social and political extremists.  They seek to maintain their illusion of demographic and cultural supremacy because of their fear of economic anxiety through psychological intimidation and legislative exclusion.

Stay Woke, America. Vote.

If we, the people, face a national emergency, it is widespread voter suppression and systematic disenfranchisement.

These are grave threats to democracy that cast a growing shadow over our electoral process. While the Trump administration promotes the false narrative of widespread voter fraud, we know the real issues are the targeted and coordinated efforts to disenfranchise African-American, Latinx, and other vulnerable communities across the country. Fighting for equal access to the ballot box, pushing back against voter suppression, ensuring that we have a fair and accurate census to inform the 2020 redistricting cycle, and ending racial gerrymandering must be the cornerstones of today’s racial justice agenda.

The evidence is overwhelming and clear: voter suppression is alive and well in 2019. In Texas, election officials brazenly rolled out a flawed voter purge list alleging that more than 95,000 non-citizens were on the registration rolls, and that 58,000 had voted illegally. In the following weeks, officials quietly dialed back their claims after they were proven to be false. These allegations were clearly intended to promote hysteria and lay the groundwork for the mass purging of registration rolls.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and our partners filed a lawsuit on Feb. 4, 2019, against Texas Secretary of State David Whitley and other election officials for attempting to chill minority voter turnout and spur mass purges of legitimately-registered voters from the registration rolls. We charged Texas officials with disseminating a flawed advisory to counties that, in turn, flagged tens of thousands of registered voters for citizen reviews despite knowing that the list included naturalized citizens eligible to vote. In a letter sent to lawmakers on Feb. 13, 2019, Whitley issued the following apology: “I recognize this caused some confusion about our intentions, which were at all times aimed at maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the voter rolls. To the extent my actions missed that mark, I apologize.” While the apology did little to neutralize the impact of the state’s initial claims, it stands as a stark example of modern-day voter suppression.

Similarly, a widespread absentee ballot theft scheme in Bladen County, North Carolina, compelled the state’s Election Board to order a new election. Bladen County operative Leslie McCrae Dowless—who had previously drawn scrutiny in 2016 for election fraud—was hired by Republican candidate Mark Harris to rig the election in his favor. Dowless paid people to illegally collect absentee ballots from voters, including having his team forge signatures, fill in votes, act as witnesses, and mail in the ballots. During a hearing held by the Board of Elections, people who worked for Dowless laid bare the details of the criminal operation. At one point, Harris’s own son testified that he warned his father about Dowless and made clear that the already compromised operative was likely harvesting absentee ballots. As the evidence continued to mount against Harris, including evidence suggesting that he clearly lied under oath during the Board of Elections’ hearing, he finally relented and announced that he was withdrawing his bid to be declared the election winner. The North Carolina Board of Elections unanimously voted to hold a new election for the 9th Congressional District. What is even more shocking is that there is evidence that the Justice Department received details of the fraudulent scheme but took no action to stop it.

Ordering a new election for a congressional seat—a highly unusual remedy—has only happened on one other occasion in modern times, and underscores the reality that efforts to silence and disenfranchise voters are a real threat today.

In Georgia, we witnessed brazen voter suppression by the now-former Secretary of State Brian Kemp. The state’s “exact match” law, which requires citizens’ names on government-issued IDs to precisely match their names as listed on voter rolls, placed more than 53,000 voter registration applications in “pending” status and caused widespread confusion leading up to the 2018 midterm election. African-American voters were disproportionately impacted by this scheme.  

The Lawyers’ Committee  also fought Georgia voter suppression efforts at the local level in places like Randolph County, where officials sought to shutter polling sites, and Gwinnett County, where officials used voter signification rules as a pretext to reject en masse significant numbers of absentee ballots. Analysis in our litigation revealed that the officials’ actions had a disproportionate impact on Black and Asian-American voters.

Changing or closing polling site locations have become favored tactics in the attack on voting rights. We saw this in Dodge City, Kansas, where Ford County Clerk Deborah Cox moved the county’s single polling site outside city limits to a less accessible area after citing construction concerns. The evidence showed that the original site was still in use for other public activities during the week of the election. Hispanic residents, who account for more than half the population of Dodge City and are heavily reliant on public transportation, were significantly and detrimentally impacted by the move.

House Democrats are working on moving two bills through Congress that can help provide significant relief. The first—and more important bill—is the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4). This bill would restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, gutted in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder. That decision brought a central component of the Act—the Section 5 federal review provision—to a grinding halt. Section 5 required that states with long histories of voting discrimination obtain review and approval before putting new voting measures in place. It should come as no surprise that Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina repeatedly stand out as states with some of the starkest voter suppression efforts. These states were previously subject to federal review; without it, officials have been brazen in their attempts to disenfranchise voters. It is critical that both the House and Senate conduct thorough legislative hearings to document the continuing need for federal review of voting changes in certain parts of the country, and it is important that both chambers of Congress pass the bill in due time. In 2006, the last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized, 24 members of the Senate were present, including 13 Republicans and 10 Democrats. There was strong bipartisan consensus in 2006 that voting discrimination was ongoing and deep-seated in certain parts of the country—and these last 10 years have only provided further evidence of this.

The For the People Act (H.R. 1) is another comprehensive election reform bill that can help strengthen democracy by promoting automatic voter registration, putting in place guardrails against gerrymandering, and more.

Both bills should pass.

Looming over the growing crisis of voter suppression is the Trump administration’s inaction on protecting voting rights but active promotion of voter suppression at every turn. President Trump’s launch of the now-defunct Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity—a body formed under the guise of reviewing elections for voter fraud—was established to lay the groundwork for voter suppression measures.

The Lawyers’ Committee filed suit to stop the Commission, leading to Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Commission after less than eight months in operation. But at every turn, President Trump has boosted the false narrative of widespread voter fraud, using his Twitter feed to frighten voters with veiled threats of criminal prosecution and reward voter suppression efforts of malefactors, as we saw with the now-failed judicial nomination of Thomas Farr, a North Carolina lawyer who had made a career out of promoting voter suppression. Advocates won that battle, beating back Farr’s nomination, but President Trump continues to lay waste to our judicial landscape, dramatically altering the composition of the courts with similarly radical nominees.

Democracy is under attack in the United States, and African Americans and other racial minorities across the country are bearing the brunt. With collective action and a clear roadmap, we can bring about meaningful reform that prioritizes racial justice and democracy.

2020 (And Beyond) Roadmap:

1. If you see something, say something.

Expose voter suppression efforts when they happen. Attend local election board meetings. Scrutinize changes and 11th hour attempts to alter voting rules in your community. The Lawyers’ Committee leads Election Protection—the nation’s largest non-partisan voter protection coalition—and you can call 866-OUR-VOTE to report voter suppression efforts.

1. Fight for a fair 2020 census.

Make sure your community understands the importance of participating and being counted in the census. Historically, African Americans have faced some of the highest undercount rates. Billions of dollars in federal funding are allocated based on census data. Between now and the count, spread the word that “Everyone Counts!”

1. Get Out the Vote in 2019 and 2020.

Critical elections are happening across the country right now and will intensify as we move into the 2020 election season. Every election counts, including local school board, city council, District Attorney contests, and more. Power extends beyond those who serve in Congress and can be felt at every level in our communities. We must engage in all elections, encourage participation, and work to turn out the vote on Election Day. Election Protection 866-OUR-VOTE educates and informs voters prior to and on Election Day.

1. Hold your elected officials accountable.

Attend a town hall, write, call, or schedule a meeting with your elected officials at their local office. Too often, communities fail to apply the pressure needed to ensure that their officials are responsive to their needs and interests. Engaging with local officials is one way to ensure transparency and promote accountability.

1. Gear up for the 2020 redistricting cycle. 

We need fair maps, and far too often, lawmakers construct maps that place the interests of politicians over voters. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has spent the past two years leading training sessions across the country to help groups prepare for redistricting. Through preparation now, we can be prepared to actively engage with lawmakers as they redraw district boundaries.

1. Run for office.

Our democracy works best when the halls of government reflect the growing diversity of our country. Consider running for office as a way to bring about the change you want to see in your community.

Today, perhaps no single issue is more important to African-Americans, Latinos, and other communities of color than protecting the right to vote for all Americans.

UnidosUS has long been concerned with and connected to voting rights expansion.  In 1975, the organization played an instrumental role in ensuring that the Voting Rights Act included protections and voter language assistance for limited-English-proficient voters.  We led efforts to reauthorize those provisions in subsequent reauthorizations of the Voting Rights Act in 1982, 1992, and in its final reauthorization in 2006.

Increasing the number of registered Latino voters has become a top priority for our organization and our community—and the reason is devastatingly clear. Of the more than 58 million Latinos in the United States (representing nearly one in five residents), Latinos make up 1 in 10 voters.  It is clear that Latinos are severely underrepresented in the American political process. 

This alarming statistic motivated UnidosUS to focus on turning eligible permanent residents into citizens, citizens into registered voters, and registered voters into actual voters.  Since 2008, we have registered more than 700,000 new voters and reached hundreds of thousands more through our voter education and mobilization programs.

Like our brothers and sisters in the African-American community, we know that voter suppression laws, and other strategies to diminish our political power, imperil not only our right to vote but American democracy as we know it.   

The raft of voter suppression laws and policies passed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act have taken a severe toll on Latino voters.  One in three Latino voters lives in areas that were previously protected under the Voting Rights Act. Our community is largely concentrated in Arizona, Florida, and Texas, states where voter suppression has been an historical problem. 

Voter purges and voter ID laws are disenfranchising tactics of notable concern to us, especially given the fact that nearly two-thirds of states have voter ID laws on the books. In 2014, 14 percent of registered Latino voters said that they did not vote because they believed they did not have the right ID.

A 2018 poll released by the Public Religion Research Institute documented the harm of voter suppression laws on Latino voters. Latino voters are three times as likely to be told they have improper ID as white voters.  They are twice as likely to be incorrectly told that their names are not on the voting rolls.  And they are three times as likely to have trouble finding their polling places on Election Day.  It is no wonder that 60 percent of Latinos surveyed in the poll believe that eligible voters being denied the right to vote was a major problem in 2018 and will likely remain a serious problem in 2020 as well.

The recent—and constant—demonization of undocumented people and the Latino community as protagonists in the debunked voter fraud myth is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to suppress the vote of eligible citizens of color. The Trump administration’s own attempt to prove widespread voter fraud was short lived. The now-disbanded voting integrity commission did not find evidence of rampant voter fraud and could not corroborate claims of illegal voting. To be clear: just as there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in this country, there is also no evidence that millions of unregistered immigrants are voting in American elections. But despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, proof of citizenship laws in states like Arizona have resulted in thousands of eligible voters being denied the right to vote. We will not allow law-abiding men and women to be denied the greatest tool we have in our democracy. To right the wrongs, UnidosUS will continue registering and mobilizing voters, especially the nearly one million Latinos who are turning 18 each year. 

In the short term, we will continue to educate voters about their rights and what recourse they have if their rights are violated.  UnidosUS has partnered with our sister organization, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), on a toll-free hotline (1-888-VE-Y-VOTA) to assist voters with voting day information and allow people to report incidents of voter intimidation or suppression. 

In the long term, UnidosUS will continue to advocate alongside the National Urban League and sister civil rights organizations for the full restoration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We will not rest until the Act is restored to its pre-Shelby version—a version that always enjoyed strong bipartisan support. During its last reauthorization, the Act passed with an overwhelming vote in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate. 

UnidosUS wants to add its voice to the chorus of advocates and activists appealing for a change from the current political paradigm that prioritizes preventing Americans from voting to one that encourages expanding the electorate.  It makes no sense to make it more difficult for people to vote when—even during heightened elections seasons such as the 2018 midterm elections—less than half of voters voted.  We strongly support measures such as automatic voter registration, same day registration, and other policies that have proven highly effective in mobilizing traditionally underrepresented groups such as young people and communities of color.

Strengthening voter participation and ensuring that all communities take their rightful place in the political process are key to protecting and expanding the progress this country has made since the Voting Rights Act was passed more than fifty years ago.

Gentrification has emerged as a major threat to Black communities that have been centers of Black political, civic, business, economic and cultural development for generations. Gentrification has become a watchword signaling the displacement of Black people and Black culture. In short, gentrification is the “Negro Removal Program” of the 21st century.

In 1963, African-American author and activist James Baldwin observed that “urban renewal” is often the first step on the destructive path to “Negro removal.”

It should come as no surprise that during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the term “Negro removal” was virtually synonymous with “urban renewal.” It was commonplace for a local highway project—designed to benefit residents from the suburbs by building out the Interstate Highway system—to be routed through the center of a Black community, uprooting and displacing Black people and permanently weakening the businesses, institutions, networks and relationships that bound these communities together. There is no denying that local, state and federal highway and development projects often disconnected and destroyed stable Black communities.  It is a historical pattern of marginalization, subverting or outright destroying Black communities to thwart our ability to achieve full political and economic empowerment and equity in this nation. Time and time again, Black people have faced schemes, targeted policies and outright violence, e.g., the Tulsa race riot of 1921 and the 1923 Rosewood massacre in Levy County, Fl., to force our removal from our homes: the very neighborhoods and communities we have worked and invested in. Gentrification is the latest manifestation of this pattern and destructive phenomenon.

A May 2018 New York Times article, “When Home No Longer Looks the Same: Rapid Change in Durham Has Left Many Black Residents Feeling Unwelcome,” captured the essence of the crisis confronting Black communities across the country. The article details how the revitalization of Durham, N.C., has increasingly meant development and progress for middle and upper-income whites but displacement for a large swatch of Black working-class and middle-class people. A Houston Chronicle article published on October 2018, “Historic Black Neighborhoods Disappear All the Time. But They Don’t Have To,” also illustrates the growing concern over gentrification in Black America.

In Atlanta, often considered the “Black Mecca” of the South, there is very little left of Vine City, the neighborhood where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Julian Bond once lived. The Sweet Auburn District, once home to major, thriving Black businesses, now sits stagnant. So-called development in Washington, D.C., the original “Chocolate City,” has displaced thousands of Black people, forcing them to move to surrounding suburban areas. In Los Angeles, a major subway extension to suburbia is spurring gentrification in Crenshaw, one of the most storied communities in Black America. In a few years, Harlem, the cultural and political capital of Black America, will hardly be recognizable. A Whole Foods Store, which many Black residents view as a symbol of gentrification, now stands were Malcolm X once held his legendary rallies.

These “chocolate cities,” once domains of Black political and economic power are vanishing. In their place, an increasing numbers of whites—who in previous generations abandoned urban centers for the safety and quietude of vanilla suburbs—are now returning to the city to be closer to work. Cities are generally hubs of metropolitan political and economic power. As Blacks are displaced and replaced by newcomers, this inevitably leads to dramatic shifts in political power from neighborhood advisory boards to city councils and the mayor’s office. The displacement and scattering of Black voters to often unwelcoming suburbs dilutes Black electoral power.

The expansion of major corporations like Google and Amazon into urban centers, which is often promoted as a stimulant for area jobs and its economy, has had the unforeseen consequence of contributing to the displacement of poor and working-class residents, with Black residents disproportionately carrying the brunt of displacement. Developments and improvements that prioritize the accommodation of newly arriving employees often drive up the cost of housing, especially rental properties, rendering them unaffordable for current residents. Property taxes also increase, putting enormous pressure on homeowners as well.

Black churches are no strangers to the unintended consequences of gentrification. Rev. Willie Wilson, senior pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast Washington D.C., told me his congregation has shrunk substantially due to the exodus of parishioners forced to leave the neighborhood and the city. He said several D.C. area churches have closed because of the loss of parishioners.

Today, communities will also have to contend with the challenges that come with Opportunity Zones tax incentive, a little-known program tucked into President Trump’s signature tax-cut law. The U.S. Department of Treasury describes Opportunity Zones as qualifying, economically-distressed communities, where new investments are “designed to spur economic development by providing tax benefits to investors.” For neighborhoods and communities already reeling from the devastation of gentrification, we should take it as an ominous sign that wealthy investors are already lining up to take advantage of this tax provision. Reportedly, Anthony Scaramucci, the mercurial associate of President Trump who served a short and tumultuous 10 days as the White House director of communications, plans on launching an opportunity zone fund through his hedge fund company, Skybridge Capital. Rev. Buster Soaries, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Somerset, N.J., who has designed a model for development without displacement, shared his belief that, “Opportunity Zones could lead to gentrification on steroids.”   

Make no mistake, the Black community believes in development. No reasonable person would ever be opposed to improvements or progress that improves their community. Development is not the problem. Development that displaces Black people and Black culture is.  Can development without displacement be achieved? Can strategies be devised that prioritize improving the lives of current residents while preserving the culture and character of their communities? The answer to both questions is yes. The collective brainpower, skill, experience and will exist within Black America to defend Black communities against gentrification. We not only possess this collective genius, we must deploy it or be displaced.

Gentrification has emerged as a major threat to Black communities that have been centers of Black political, civic, business, economic and cultural development for generations. Gentrification has become a watchword signaling the displacement of Black people and Black culture. In short, gentrification is the “Negro Removal Program” of the 21st century.

In 1963, African-American author and activist James Baldwin observed that “urban renewal” is often the first step on the destructive path to “Negro removal.”

It should come as no surprise that during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the term “Negro removal” was virtually synonymous with “urban renewal.” It was commonplace for a local highway project—designed to benefit residents from the suburbs by building out the Interstate Highway system—to be routed through the center of a Black community, uprooting and displacing Black people and permanently weakening the businesses, institutions, networks and relationships that bound these communities together. There is no denying that local, state and federal highway and development projects often disconnected and destroyed stable Black communities.  It is a historical pattern of marginalization, subverting or outright destroying Black communities to thwart our ability to achieve full political and economic empowerment and equity in this nation. Time and time again, Black people have faced schemes, targeted policies and outright violence, e.g., the Tulsa race riot of 1921 and the 1923 Rosewood massacre in Levy County, Fl., to force our removal from our homes: the very neighborhoods and communities we have worked and invested in. Gentrification is the latest manifestation of this pattern and destructive phenomenon.

A May 2018 New York Times article, “When Home No Longer Looks the Same: Rapid Change in Durham Has Left Many Black Residents Feeling Unwelcome,” captured the essence of the crisis confronting Black communities across the country. The article details how the revitalization of Durham, N.C., has increasingly meant development and progress for middle and upper-income whites but displacement for a large swatch of Black working-class and middle-class people. A Houston Chronicle article published on October 2018, “Historic Black Neighborhoods Disappear All the Time. But They Don’t Have To,” also illustrates the growing concern over gentrification in Black America.

In Atlanta, often considered the “Black Mecca” of the South, there is very little left of Vine City, the neighborhood where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Julian Bond once lived. The Sweet Auburn District, once home to major, thriving Black businesses, now sits stagnant. So-called development in Washington, D.C., the original “Chocolate City,” has displaced thousands of Black people, forcing them to move to surrounding suburban areas. In Los Angeles, a major subway extension to suburbia is spurring gentrification in Crenshaw, one of the most storied communities in Black America. In a few years, Harlem, the cultural and political capital of Black America, will hardly be recognizable. A Whole Foods Store, which many Black residents view as a symbol of gentrification, now stands were Malcolm X once held his legendary rallies.

These “chocolate cities,” once domains of Black political and economic power are vanishing. In their place, an increasing numbers of whites—who in previous generations abandoned urban centers for the safety and quietude of vanilla suburbs—are now returning to the city to be closer to work. Cities are generally hubs of metropolitan political and economic power. As Blacks are displaced and replaced by newcomers, this inevitably leads to dramatic shifts in political power from neighborhood advisory boards to city councils and the mayor’s office. The displacement and scattering of Black voters to often unwelcoming suburbs dilutes Black electoral power.

The expansion of major corporations like Google and Amazon into urban centers, which is often promoted as a stimulant for area jobs and its economy, has had the unforeseen consequence of contributing to the displacement of poor and working-class residents, with Black residents disproportionately carrying the brunt of displacement. Developments and improvements that prioritize the accommodation of newly arriving employees often drive up the cost of housing, especially rental properties, rendering them unaffordable for current residents. Property taxes also increase, putting enormous pressure on homeowners as well.

Black churches are no strangers to the unintended consequences of gentrification. Rev. Willie Wilson, senior pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast Washington D.C., told me his congregation has shrunk substantially due to the exodus of parishioners forced to leave the neighborhood and the city. He said several D.C. area churches have closed because of the loss of parishioners.

Today, communities will also have to contend with the challenges that come with Opportunity Zones tax incentive, a little-known program tucked into President Trump’s signature tax-cut law. The U.S. Department of Treasury describes Opportunity Zones as qualifying, economically-distressed communities, where new investments are “designed to spur economic development by providing tax benefits to investors.” For neighborhoods and communities already reeling from the devastation of gentrification, we should take it as an ominous sign that wealthy investors are already lining up to take advantage of this tax provision. Reportedly, Anthony Scaramucci, the mercurial associate of President Trump who served a short and tumultuous 10 days as the White House director of communications, plans on launching an opportunity zone fund through his hedge fund company, Skybridge Capital. Rev. Buster Soaries, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Somerset, N.J., who has designed a model for development without displacement, shared his belief that, “Opportunity Zones could lead to gentrification on steroids.”   

Make no mistake, the Black community believes in development. No reasonable person would ever be opposed to improvements or progress that improves their community. Development is not the problem. Development that displaces Black people and Black culture is.  Can development without displacement be achieved? Can strategies be devised that prioritize improving the lives of current residents while preserving the culture and character of their communities? The answer to both questions is yes. The collective brainpower, skill, experience and will exist within Black America to defend Black communities against gentrification. We not only possess this collective genius, we must deploy it or be displaced.

Like so much else in the United States, voting is strongly correlated with income [1]. Conventional wisdom might assume that individuals experiencing economic hardship would be more inclined to get involved in the political process—if only to ameliorate their day-to-day economic concerns, but a report by the Scholars Strategy Network[2] finds that citizens who vote tend to have higher incomes. Unemployment, poverty and economic insecurity has as much an effect on suppressing voter participation as draconian voter ID laws and poll closings. The intentional—or unintentional—consequence of our nation’s stubborn racial income gap is the loss of a lever of power for low-income communities to lift themselves from poverty by electing politicians or pressuring incumbents to address their specific needs and improve their access to opportunity.

The 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances [3] enumerates America’s racial wealth gap in troubling detail.  According to the survey, white families had a median net worth of $171,000 compared to $17,600 for Black families.  Between 2013 and 2016, the white-Black gap in median net worth increased 16 percent from $132,800 to $153,400.  Sociologists, political scientists and economists have studied the issue of white-Black economic inequality for years. It has been the focus of media attention and a major economic concern of Black families for decades. If Americans facing economic adversity voted based on income and financial circumstances, they could elect politicians committed to passing laws that would increase wages, provide equal opportunities for educational advancement and pass meaningful and efficient regulations that would improve their quality of life. Most Americans realize the importance of these issues and recognize that voting can play a role in improving them.  However, voter turnout varies based on a number of socioeconomic factors. 

In 2012, the voting rate for non-Hispanic Blacks was 66.6 percent compared to 64.1 percent for non-Hispanic whites.  However, in 2016, voter turnout increased to 65.2 percent for non-Hispanic whites but decreased to 59.6 percent for non-Hispanic Blacks[4].  In terms of education, those with a high school education or more had a voter turnout of 77 percent, compared to 44 percent for those with a high school diploma or less.  The voter turnout was 69 percent for those whose family income was more than $50,000, compared with 50 percent for those whose family income was less than $50,000[5].  According to the United States Elections Project (USEP),[6] in 2016, the voting eligible population was 230.6 million.  Of those, 138.6 million (60.1 percent) citizens voted and 92 million did not. Why did 92 million eligible Americans not exercise their right to vote during the 2016 presidential election[7]?

The answer lies in political interest, personal motivation and, oftentimes, ability.

For low-income earners and those who face economic adversity, the cost of voting can be too high a social and financial barrier to scale.  Political science researcher, Steven J. Rosenstone (1982), suggests that economic adversity increases the opportunity costs of civic participation—including voting—and reduces a person’s capacity to engage in politics, giving birth to a vicious cycle of neglect and poverty. Political participation, which can include contributing money to political campaigns, running for public office, voting and protesting, are methods afforded to all citizens to communicate their needs, interests and  preferences and generate pressure on politicians to respond[8].  However, because some forms of political participation in the United States are so tied to income, elected officials will inevitably pay more attention to the needs and policy preferences of affluent voters[9], leaving the most vulnerable with the least political representation, further contributing to the income and opportunity gap, breeding an economic adversity voting paradox.

It has been well established in the literature on voting that racially biased voter suppression tactics, such as improper voter purges, early voting cutbacks, restrictive voter ID requirements, the closing of polling locations in Black neighborhoods and restrictions on student voting disproportionately impacts Black and low-income communities. Because race and poverty are also historically linked in this country, time-worn, race-based strategies that make it difficult for Black people to vote make them especially vulnerable to economic inequality. These kinds of laws and policies are particularly burdensome for voters who are anxious about keeping a roof over their head, missing a car note or feeding a family.

Voting is out of reach for those who do not have a permanent address—they will likely not have an approved form of ID to vote in states that require identification, and the cost of obtaining an ID can be a legitimate hurdle for some. Elections are held on a work day; for people who work at jobs without paid leave, taking time off work is a heavy financial burden. A wealth of studies show that it takes longer to vote in poor areas. For hourly workers, voting can become synonymous with lost wages. Finding reliable or affordable transportation to polling sites is often noted as a deterrent to voting. From single-parents who have child care scheduling to contend with to students with full class and work loads, these structural roadblocks to the voting franchise work to suppress the vote.

Voting – often considered the most fundamental right in the United States – is a way for American citizens to have their voices heard.  Unfortunately, those with the greatest need are least likely to be heard from due to a combination of economic adversity and voter suppression tactics that decrease voter turnout.  Therefore, increasing voter turnout among low-income minority voters must go hand-in-hand with decreasing economic inequality, increasing political engagement, and eliminating all forms of voter suppression. Citizens who struggle with the challenges of entrenched economic adversity pay a high price for their inability to participate in the very political process that can offer remedies to alleviate income inequality.

[1] Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. (1995). Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

[2] Franko, William W., Kelly, Nathan J., and Witko, Christopher. “How Roadblocks to Voting Make Income Inequality Worse” Scholars Strategy Network. (January 15, 2014).

[3] Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF).

[4] File, Thom. (2017). “Voting in America: A Look at the 2016 Presidential Election.” United States Census Bureau.

[5] MIT Election Data. Voter Turnout. Available at: https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voter-turnout

[6] McDonald, Michael. United States Elections Project. “2016 November General Election Turnout Rates” (September 5, 2018)

[7] United States Elections Project, “2016 November General Election Turnout Rates,” available at: http://www.electproject.org/2016g

[8] Rosenstone, Steven, J. “Economic Adversity and Voter Turnout.” American Journal of Political Science (1982): 25-46

[9] Ibid Franko

Have you met Luisa Haynes? She was a prolific force in the #BlackLivesMatter community on Twitter. In just over a year, she amassed more than 50,000 followers; and her outspoken, viral takes on everything from Beyoncé to police brutality earned her hundreds of thousands of retweets and media coverage in more than two dozen prominent news outlets.

She was, on the surface, a symbol of a new generation of Black activists: young, female, and digitally savvy—except—she was fake.

In October 2018, Twitter released data associated with more than 3,000 accounts created by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) based in St. Petersburg, Russia. “Luisa Haynes,” known as @WokeLuisa, was one of many IRA-manufactured accounts that used sock puppet personas to impersonate African Americans, particularly those affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement. It was part of a far-reaching Russian strategy to manipulate and hijack the legitimate social and political grievances of African Americans.

“Russia was able to influence our election because they figured out that racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and transphobia are America’s Achilles heel,” California senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris tweeted in February. She added, “These issues aren't only civil rights – they're also a matter of national security.”

While the technology used in Russia’s widespread (and ongoing) information operations may be new, the focus on America’s moral failings—particularly regarding racial inequality—is not. And Harris’s warning that racism is a “matter of national security” is less a revelation than a reminder that America’s internal demons have long been used against it by foreign adversaries.

During the Cold War, U.S. efforts to gain ideological supremacy over the Soviet Union, particularly in the developing world, were constantly undermined by racial strife at home. As the United States attempted to extoll the virtues of liberal democracy, Soviet propagandists needed only to point to Birmingham and Little Rock as proof positive of the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of America, and, by extension, the system itself. There was no need for distortion or disinformation; images of Bull Connor, German shepherds, and fire hoses turned against Black protestors spoke for themselves.

But the Soviet state also used segregation and racial violence in America for its own benefit. Whenever the United States admonished the Soviet Union for civil rights abuses, the Soviets were able to deflect criticism by pointing back at America’s segregationist polices. This rhetorical tactic, commonly known as “whataboutism,” was so pervasive that the Kremlin’s oft-used rebuttal – “And you are lynching Negroes” – became a satirical witticism in the Soviet Union.

The reputational damage caused by Jim Crow injustices and racial violence was not lost on American officials. Former President Dwight Eisenhower—a man hardly known for progressive racial views—noted in his memoir that there was a fear that stilted progress on civil rights “could continue to feed the mill of Soviet propagandists who by word and picture were telling the world of the ‘racial terror’ in the United States.” Regardless of its intent, Soviet propaganda therefore had an unintended consequence—it expedited progress on civil rights reforms in the 1950s and 1960s.

Modern Russia’s exploitation of contemporary social justice struggles portends no such progress. As in the past, Russian operatives are playing on divisions of America’s own creation. But while the Soviet Union certainly attempted to exacerbate race relations in the United States through so-called “active measures” (perhaps most infamously during the 1984 Olympics, when the KGB forged threatening letters purportedly sent by the KKK to African and Asian athletes), their ability to infiltrate or impersonate genuine activist communities was limited. Today, that is no longer the case.

The anonymity and audience segmentation baked into online social networks has allowed Russia’s online provocateurs to nimbly insinuate themselves into Black activist communities, where they can, in their own words, “effectively aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population.” As social media analyst Justin Hendrix has observed, an effect of Russia’s exploitation of authentic movements is that “civil rights groups—already beleaguered by the fight against an onslaught of regressive policies of domestic politicians—must also now fight well-funded state actors who seek to use their interests as leverage in a broader campaign to destabilize the West.”

It is also important to remember that Russian trolls lurk on the other side of the debate, helping to stoke the racist, toxic vitriol directed at Black activists. Black activists are, therefore, caught in a vice grip of deception, with Russian trolls working from within and without to undermine their interests.

Kate Starbird, a researcher at the University of Washington, illustrated this point in a recent study that found that inauthentic Russian troll accounts were not only deeply embedded in authentic online Twitter conversations related to the #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter movements, but they were often the most polarizing voices in those debates. Motivated by social division rather than social justice, these imposter accounts worked the margins, manufacturing consensus for partisan viewpoints while simultaneously pushing their own strategic objectives. Starbird and her team noted, for example, that purported Black Lives Matter personas created by the IRA were consistently critical of Hillary Clinton and encouraged others in the community not to vote for her (or vote at all). This finding mirrors a report from the social justice watchdog group Stop Online Violence Against Women (SOVAW), which noted that IRA purchased Facebook ads targeted at Black Americans had “the explicit goal of suppressing voter turnout.” These Russian efforts intensified a point of friction within pro-#BlackLivesMatter clusters, highlighting the very real potential for manipulated conversations to prompt fragmentation within activist movements—not to mention the possibility that it depressed the Black vote.

The ability of foreign actors to look, act, and speak like the online communities they target creates the obvious potential for manipulation. At the same time, genuine activists may, in fact, be best positioned to recognize and ferret out the imposters in their midst. For example, in the aftermath of the killing of Philando Castille, an unarmed Black man shot to death by a police officer in Minnesota, Black Lives Matter activists flagged what turned out to be a Russian-operated, faux-BLM Facebook page as suspicious due to its use of the slogan “Don’t Shoot”—a phrase that many genuine activists had long since abandoned.

Those subtle inconsistencies are less likely to be noticed by those outside of Black activist circles, meaning that content seeded by IRA trolls posing as Black activists may have a more profound impact on broader public perceptions and opinions. This is especially problematic given that Russian internet trolls often engage in a form of digital blackface, painting grossly stereotypical portrayals of the African Americans whose personas and vernacular they co-opt. These caricatures are not only offensive and demeaning, they can discredit the legitimacy of the causes they claim to support. By promoting viewpoints that seek to generate polarization rather than reasoned debate, Russian trolls can skew the perception of critics and potential supporters alike, particularly when those opinions—like Luisa Haynes’—find their way into mainstream media outlets.

A less explored—yet perhaps more problematic—outcome is the potential for real or perceived foreign interference to be used to discredit authentic opinions and movements. Authentic Black activists have expressed concern, for example, that engagement with specific hashtags that have been hijacked by inauthentic accounts have led to them being incorrectly labelled “Russian bots.”  This not only damages freedom of expression, it also creates a perverse incentive for bad actors—Russians or otherwise—to openly interfere with causes they seek to derail. If all one needs to discredit a movement is the mere specter of foreign “support,” it will create an all-too-easy mechanism for foreign actors to inflict further damage on our democracy.

It is, therefore, essential that we address the problem of foreign manipulation without the unintended consequence of inflicting further harm on the activists and issues they have targeted. We must also not lose sight of the fact that despite the very real threat of foreign interference, social media can be, and has been, a tool to empower historically marginalized communities and individuals. Finally, we must recognize the lessons of history and understand that, as a society, we are only vulnerable to external interference when we ourselves are divided.