Voting is fundamental to our democracy and is a right that should never be taken away. But in November, as many of us cast the most important votes of our lives, millions of Americans will once again be denied that right. Today nearly 5.2 million Americans are barred from exercising their right to vote because they have felony convictions. Most are Black and living in poverty.   

Felony disenfranchisement remains the longest-standing form of voter suppression in the U.S.—and it’s past time for us to end it once and for all.  

Working against the Authorization for Use of Military Force then and now 

On Sept. 11, 2001, an attack on U.S. soil stunned the world.  For many people, the United States’ safety and place in the world had never felt so precarious. In the following days and years, Congress passed reactive policies, which gave the president the authority to use military force and increased domestic surveillance.

Hafsa Siddiqui is a 5th Grade Reading and Social Studies teacher on the northside of Chicago and a graduate student at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She is the co-author of the Countering Anti-Muslim Racism in Schools curriculum.