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San Juan County, New Mexico Board of Commissioners Redistricting Plan Violates the Voting Rights of Navajo Nation Citizens

The Board of Commissioners of San Juan County, New Mexico adopted a redistricting plan that denies San Juan County’s Navajo Nation citizens and other Indigenous voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by civil rights advocates against the county.

Matt Barreto in NBC Right Now: “Redistricting lawsuit filed against three Washington leaders for lack of Voting Rights Act compliant district in Yakima Valley”

Furthermore, the compliant said district 15 has a concentration of white voters with a history of racially polarized voting. This was discovered through a study done on voting patterns in the valley by the Director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project Matt Barreto.

Bernadette Reyes in Farmington Daily Times: “Lawsuit alleges San Juan County’s new district map violates Voting Rights Act”

“The fight to ensure the voting rights of all Americans is taking place in county and state courthouses all across the nation,” Bernadette Reyes, staff attorney with UCLA Voting Rights Project, said in the release.

Sonja Diaz in KOLD News 13: “Latinas leaving job market at higher rates than other demographics, report says”

The University of California, Los Angeles’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute found that between March 2020 and March 2021, the number of Latinas in the workforce dropped by nearly 3%. “Some of our most insightful and critical workers are going to be left out of the labor force and it’s going to be detrimental to all Americans,” said Sonja Diaz, founding executive director of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Kelly Lytle Hernández in Reno Gazette-Journal: “Opinion: While Nevada makes anti-racism history, Biden administration pushes back”

To speak to the 1929 law, Gorman presented the testimony of Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández, the Thomas E. Lifka Chair of History at UCLA. Professor Lytle Hernández recounted the anti-Mexican sentiment pervading America during what historians describe as the “tribal ’20s,” including the “Juan Crow” regime, a racialized system of legal oppression of Latinos in the U.S. mirroring Jim Crow laws targeting Black Americans in the south.

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