Federal Court Blocks Controversial Texas Voter ID Law

by Ariane de Vogue

ABC News

A federal court in Washington ruled on Thursday that a Texas Voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act, effectively blocking the law from taking effect.

The unanimous three judge district court ruled, “The State of Texas enacted a voter ID law that — at least to our knowledge — is the most stringent in the country.  That law will almost certainly have retrogressive effect: it imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty.”

In the weeks leading up to the election, the law — passed by a Republican-led Texas legislature — has gained particular attention as supporters said it was meant to protect voter integrity, while critics claimed it would lead to voter suppression. The Voter ID law requires people voting in person to provide certain government-issued photo IDs when the come to the polls.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott released a statement today vowing to appeal the decision. “The Supreme Court of the United States has already upheld Voter ID laws as a constitutional method of ensuring integrity at the ballot box. Today’s decision is wrong on the law and improperly prevents Texas from implementing the same type of ballot integrity safeguards that are employed by Georgia and Indiana – and were upheld by the Supreme Court. The State will appeal this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we are confident we will prevail.”

Fall of the Republic

It has been three years since this video was released...Ask yourself one question: How many of the indictments and/or predictions in this film have occured or soon will?



Think about it

Homeland Security’s Intent On Creating Civil War

Its Clear Our Military Is No Longer The Nation's Only Standing Army When It Comes To Killing Power.
by Jack Swint 

West Virginia News

Over the past 2 weeks, everyone from the mainstream media to bloggers and conspiracy theorists have questioned the government's mass purchasing of ammunition for federal agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and even the Social Security Administration. Combined, both agencies ordered over 210,000 rounds. This ammunition is mostly made up of "hollow point" bullets, which are designed strictly for maximum damage to the human body and have been outlawed for use in warfare since 1969.

On the surface, these purchases alone are scary enough and raise questions as to why these unlikely agencies need any amounts of ammo, especially bullets that have been outlawed. NOAA claims they have 63 officers who "enforce the nation's ocean and fishing laws to ensure a level playing field for fishermen and to protect marine species like whales, dolphins and turtles." If you divide 46,000 rounds by the 63 agents they employ, that's 730 bullets per agent, or, in other words, 63 crack shots and a lot of dead fisherman.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has given no specific response to questions regarding their purchase of 174,00 rounds. They said their "agents' need them. But, keep this in mind:  the SSA only deals with US Citizens in America. The SSA has never been involved with anything outside of this country for any reason. And what do they need with armed agents?  All SSA offices employ private contracted security for their offices.

America’s Descent into Poverty

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

This article originally posted on: Institute for Political Economy

 

The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.

Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, “Low-wage work is pandemic.” Today in “freedom and democracy” America, “the world’s only superpower,” one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.

Others might be Ph.D.s teaching at universities as adjunct professors for $10,000 per year or less. Education is still touted as the way out of poverty, but increasingly is a path into poverty or into enlistments into the military services.

How U.S. Economic and Military Actions Helped Create Latin Billionair​es, Pauperize Millions

Constributed by Sherwood Ross

The United States has worked across Latin America to enrich private clients at the expense of the pauperized masses, Professor of Sociology Emeritus James Petras of Binghamton University, N.Y.,  charges.

“Never in the 20th Century (1990-2001) were so many lucrative public monopolies transferred to private national and foreign investors, in so many countries and covering such a vast...array of sectors in less than a decade,” Petras asserts in his book, “Rulers and Ruled in the U.S. Empire”(Clarity).

Washington backed clients Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil, Carlos Salinas in Mexico, and Carlos Menem in Argentina. Menem privatized more than 1,000 public enterprises by executive decree; Cardoso privatized the most lucrative state enterprises, and Salinas privatized over 110 public enterprises, Petras reckoned.

What’s more, Salinas opened Mexico’s borders to subsidized U.S. agricultural exports that ruined over 1.5 million Mexican farmers and his policies “facilitated the U.S. takeover of Mexico’s retail trade, real estate, agriculture, industry, banking and communications sector,” Petras wrote.

The RNC Arrives in Tampa and With It, Martial Law

by S. Paul Forrest

AmericaRevealed.org

We discussed this as one of the stories - 08-27-12 - Breaking Taboo - Newdissidentradio.com - 7:00 PM EST - If you missed it, Listen HERE.

The Republican National Convention is intended to be an event where politicians and their delegates meet to finalize their selection of a Presidential Nominee and outline their agenda for the party.  Typically, this event is surrounded by media and special interest pomp which like the counter DNC, is intended to rouse the troops and excite the base before the General Election.  This year’s RNC however, is mired in controversy surrounding the Republican Party’s all too apparent, anti-social agenda and a non-performance track record in Congress which has many in this Nation protesting and Law Enforcement being paid to protect.  No where has this become more obvious than in Tampa, Florida the location of this election’s RNC.

In preparation for this event, the City of Tampa has spent nearly $100 Million dollars of tax payer money.  The expenses include everything from surveillance cameras to mounted police patrolling the streets and barricades to keep anyone out who would dare not support the politics of nothingness.  Our downtown has been transformed from a normally peaceful one into a war zone patrolled and monitored by the Secret Service and several other law enforcement agencies.  Streets are being closed, bus lines rerouted and during the event, the Cross Town expressway, closed.  As news and military helicopters fly above, the police and the court system below prepare for what they predict will be an event surrounded by violent protests.  They are now more than ready to protect the interests of a political system that has all but abandoned We the People.

The America That Once Championed Human Rights, Freedom And Democracy Is No More

by Michael Payne

OpedNews.com

America has, over many years, done an excellent job of portraying itself as the bastion of human rights, freedom and democracy. However, there is only one problem with that wondrous self-assessment; it is simply not the case as it has become very evident that, based on this nation's hubristic actions around the world and it continued repressive actions domestically, it has forfeited the right to that distinction. We might say that a nation that no longer practices what it preaches, should just stop preaching.

At the end of the Second World War, when America had established itself as the premier military power, it had to choose whether it would exercise this power as the facilitator of peace or if it would use this power as a dominating force. We now are well aware of what role America chose to take as illustrated by its succession of wars and the building of a massive military empire. War is in and peace is out.

Pussy Riot, The Unfortunate Dupes of Amerikan Hegemony

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

This article originally posted on: Institute for Political Economy

 

My heart goes out to the three Russian women who comprise the Russian rock band, Pussy Riot. They were brutally deceived and used by the Washington-financed NGOs that have infiltrated Russia. Pussy Riot was sent on a mission that was clearly illegal under statutory law.

You have to admire and to appreciate the spunk of the women. But you have to bemoan their gullibility. Washington needed a popular issue with which to demonize the Russian government for standing up to Washington’s intention to destroy Syria, just as Washington destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and as Washington intends to destroy Lebanon and Iran.

By intentionally offending religious worshipers–which would be a hate crime in the US and its European, Canadian, and British puppet states–the women violated a statutory Russian law.

US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and the west stays silent

by Glenn Greenwald

The Guardian

The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.

A 2004 official alert from the FBI warned that "terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack"; the bulletin advised that such terror devices "are generally detonated less than one hour after initial attack, targeting first responders as well as the general population". Security experts have long noted that the evil of this tactic lies in its exploitation of the natural human tendency to go to the scene of an attack to provide aid to those who are injured, and is specifically potent for sowing terror by instilling in the population an expectation that attacks can, and likely will, occur again at any time and place:

"'The problem is that once the initial explosion goes off, many people will believe that's it, and will respond accordingly,' [the Heritage Foundation's Jack] Spencer said … The goal is to 'incite more terror. If there's an initial explosion and a second explosion, then we're thinking about a third explosion,' Spencer said."

 

A 2007 report from the US department of homeland security christened the term "double tap" to refer to what it said was "a favorite tactic of Hamas: a device is set off, and when police and other first responders arrive, a second, larger device is set off to inflict more casualties and spread panic." Similarly, the US justice department has highlighted this tactic in its prosecutions of some of the nation's most notorious domestic terrorists. Eric Rudolph, convicted of bombing gay nightclubs and abortion clinics, was said to have "targeted federal agents by placing second bombs nearby set to detonate after police arrived to investigate the first explosion".

In 2010, when WikiLeaks published a video of the incident in which an Apache helicopter in Baghdad killed two Reuters journalists, what sparked the greatest outrage was not the initial attack, which the US army claimed was aimed at armed insurgents, but rather the follow-up attack on those who arrived at the scene to rescue the wounded. From the Guardian's initial report on the WikiLeaks video:

"A van draws up next to the wounded man and Iraqis climb out. They are unarmed and start to carry the victim to the vehicle in what would appear to be an attempt to get him to hospital. One of the helicopters opens fire with armour-piercing shells. 'Look at that. Right through the windshield,' says one of the crew. Another responds with a laugh.

"Sitting behind the windscreen were two children who were wounded.

"After ground forces arrive and the children are discovered, the American air crew blame the Iraqis. 'Well it's their fault for bringing kids in to a battle,' says one. 'That's right,' says another.

"Initially the US military said that all the dead were insurgents."

Read the rest of this article at The Guardian

Home Economics Banks Can Legally Steal Customer Funds From Private Checking Accounts

by Susanne Posel
Originally posted on Occupy Corporatism

In 2007, the Sentinel Management Group (SMG) collapsed, leaving many customer segregated funds lost after they had been used as collateral. After a plethora of lawsuits and creditor claims, a decision earlier this month in the 7th Circuit Court placed the banking cartels ahead of customer claims for funds returned. Essentially, the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) sued to be first in line for return on stolen customer account monies – and won the right by the US court system.

In the mainstream media (MSM), the SMG collapse and subsequent ruling in favor of BNYM was touted as a difficulty “for customers to recoup money lost”.

SMG, a Chicago-based futures broker, had stolen more than $500 million in segregated customer funds to use as collateral on a loan to BNYM for in-house proprietary trading operations. Their books were audited by the National Futures Association (NFA), however the NFA admitted that they could not understand the convoluted mess they were provided by SMG to sign off on. And yet they did; and approved the audit.

Can a Single Politician or Administration, Really Destroy America?

by S. Paul Forrest

AmericaRevealed.org

We will be discussing this as one of the stories - 08-20-12 - Breaking Taboo - Newdissidentradio.com - 7:00 PM EST - Be sure to tune in.

Whenever election time comes to rear it’s ugly head in America, partisan attacks and fears of the next administration making changes that will destroy the fabric of our nation hypnotizes voters into thinking that the next politician they elect or the “other” side elects, will somehow transform our nation into a better, worse or even, an horrific place. This mentality not only demonstrates the absolute ignorance of Americans of how our Governmental system was designed to work, it brings to the forefront the real problem we are facing as a whole – division instead of unity and what our governmental system is slowly transforming into while we fall asleep at the wheel within our troglodyte world of televised idiocy.  

What most people fail to remember or in some cases never knew to begin with, is how one politician or one Administration cannot dictate every Law put into place or independently steer the course of our nation without the support of the majority in Congress and then, survive the determinations of the Judiciary if our Constitution is in anyway encumbered by those dictates. As evidenced by the administrative ineptitudes of the current Democratic occupation of the White House, one Administration cannot change America without agreement from both sides of the aisle.

Is Washington Deaf As Well as Criminal?

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

This article originally posted on: Institute for Political Economy

The morons who rule the american sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the american “superpower” only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply.

Israel is a tiny insignificant state, created by the careless British and the stupid americans. It has no power except what its american protector provides. Yet, despite Israel’s insignificance, it rules Washington.

When a resolution introduced by the Israel Lobby is delivered to Congress, it passes unanimously. If Israel wants war, Israel gets its wish. When Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and Lebanon and is damned by the hundred plus UN resolutions passed against Israel’s criminal actions, the US bails Israel out of trouble with its veto.

The New Totalitarianism of Surveillance Technology

by Naomi Wolf

theguardian

A software engineer in my Facebook community wrote recently about his outrage that when he visited Disneyland, and went on a ride, the theme park offered him the photo of himself and his girlfriend to buy – with his credit card information already linked to it. He noted that he had never entered his name or information into anything at the theme park, or indicated that he wanted a photo, or alerted the humans at the ride to who he and his girlfriend were – so, he said, based on his professional experience, the system had to be using facial recognition technology. He had never signed an agreement allowing them to do so, and he declared that this use was illegal. He also claimed that Disney had recently shared data from facial-recognition technology with the United States military.

Yes, I know: it sounds like a paranoid rant.

Except that it turned out to be true. News21, supported by the Carnegie and Knight foundations, reports that Disney sites are indeed controlled by face-recognition technology, that the military is interested in the technology, and that the face-recognition contractor, Identix, has contracts with the US government – for technology that identifies individuals in a crowd.

Beaten Down, Isolated, Angry, and Distracted

'Awake we share the world; sleeping, each turns to his private world.'

by Phil Rockstroh

A couple of decades ago, upon returning to Atlanta, Georgia, after spending a year abroad, I would frequent an independent bookshop that contained a small coffee shop/cafe, where I would sip tea, read books and periodicals, and engage in the nearly extinct art of long form face-to-face verbal discourse with other habituates of the cafe. To this day, I have long standing friendships with a number of people I came to know during those years.

Yet even then, I noticed how the atomization inherent to the internalization of the corporate state (the manner that the domination of commercial and work space had all but eliminated the public commons) had diminished so many people's ability to converse on all but the most superficial level.

Any invocation to deepen conversation or an assertion that arrived outside of the realm of status quo consensus caused all too many to simply go haywire. People checked out, went blank, testiness ensued…Comfort zones were mobilized for a siege. The space between people became a no man's land, stippled with a minefield of sensitivities.

Welcome to America: The Land Of Illusion

by S. Paul Forrest

AmericaRevealed.org

If you missed the discussion on Newdissidentradio.com -  Breaking Taboo -  7:00 PM EST - 08/13/12 ... LISTEN TO IT HERE...

In the years of old, many in this world looked to America as the quintessential example of a land in which any dream could come true if worked hard enough for.  Millions have come here in hope that the reality they suffered for in their countries of origin would become a distant memory as they embarked upon a new life here, in this great land.  It is so very sad though, how this nation is falling away from what it once represented only to more closely resemble the third world nations from which so many immigrants originated.

As our leaders institute free trade agreements - crippling our domestic economy and work to transform our healthcare system into a socialist conflagration, our state of being and our very purpose as written upon our Statue of Liberty, is fading into nothingness.  Given the administrative follies enacted by bureaucrats, the tired, huddled masses yearning to be free in the world, may soon no longer be able to look to the Dream once so engrained within the promise of this great land. Instead of representing true Liberty and Justice, our nation has come to offer fear based laws and religious zealousness in place of multiculturalism and diversity; changing America in the worst of ways. 

In the world today, our nation’s education system is ranked 27^th and falling rapidly, anti-immigration initiatives are closing us off from many in the world while the military industrial complex so poisoning our national sense of preservation, makes enemies of the rest; driving our nation into unrecoverable debt and an amoral standing.  Like so many third world nations, the least among us are being ignored while the few at the top and in government reap the benefits of the corporatist state we have allowed to flourish while the rest of us fall deeper into a class-based recession.

Too many within the halls of governance are propelling this nation toward a time of tragedy, taking our freedom from us with their tools of ignorance and fear propagation, including our current President.  Those people of the world who still yearn to be free can longer look to us to guide them toward the hope they long for. All they can do now is pity us while this once great nation fades into the annuls of time as just one more empire destroyed by power lust, Theocratic fervor and executive misguidance and all the people here seem to do is ignore the reality that America is dying while they sleep in front of their televisions, living within an illusion constructed of dreams which will never be again.

The best part is about tomorrow's show: Wait for it.........Our guest is Javier Valencia: An immigrant recently become citizen who will be helping to compare his nation of origin - Colombia - and what he sees as the fading of the America he once thought was but only now sees as no different than the place from where he came. This is gonna be good!

Obama fights ban on indefinite detention of Americans

by Brett Redmayne-Titley

RT.com

 

The White House has filed an appeal in hopes of reversing a federal judge’s ruling that bans the indefinite military detention of Americans because attorneys for the president say they are justified to imprison alleged terrorists without charge.

Manhattan federal court Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in May that the indefinite detention provisions signed into law late last year by US President Barack Obama failed to “pass constitutional muster” and ordered a temporary injunction to keep the military from locking up any person, American or other, over allegations of terrorist ties. On Monday, however, federal prosecutors representing President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta filed a claim with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of eliminating that ban.

The plaintiffs "cannot point to a single example of the military's detaining anyone for engaging in conduct even remotely similar to the type of expressive activities they allege could lead to detention," Obama’s attorneys insist. With that, the White House is arguing that as long as the indefinite detention law hasn’t be enforced yet, there is no reason for a judge to invalidate it.

The Terrible Economy And The Anti-election of 2012

by Robert Reich

RobertReich.org

The worst economy since the Great Depression and you might think at least one of the candidates would come up with a few big ideas for how to get us out of it.

But you’d be wrong. Neither candidate wants to take any chances by offering any large, serious proposals. Both are banking instead on negative campaigns that convince voters the other guy would be worse.

President Obama has apparently decided against advancing any bold ideas for what he’d do in the second term, even if he has a Congress that would cooperate with him.
. 

He’s sticking to a worn script that says George W. Bush caused the lousy economy, congressional Republicans have opposed everything he’s wanted to do to boost it, it’s slowly on the mend anyway, the Bush tax cuts shouldn’t be extended for the rich, and we shouldn’t take a chance electing Romney.

The Science of Genocide

by Chris Hedges

TruthDig.com

On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death.

Christianity 5.0: Delusion Rekindled

S. Paul Forrest

AmericaRevealed.org

We will be discussing this as one of the topics on Newdissidentradio.com -  Breaking Taboo -  7:00 PM EST - 08/06/12 ... Be sure to tune in.

Across this nation today, the Christian Right is marching to the sounds of thumping Bibles, fighting to cast America back into the Dark Ages of thought as only they and their contributors can do.  They time and time again, have claimed to represent Christian values while attempting to restore our Country to the days of our Founding Fathers but by their own actions, have come to represent nothing more than the very Pharisees and Sadducees Jesus himself cautioned us all against as acting within the Church to serve only evil. In fact, given the pretexts of their beliefs and dictates of a “non-secular” class devoted to God while only serving the rich and privileged, the entire premise of Christian revivalism is a contradiction in terms.

I couldn’t possibly image this “Savior” they worship would ever have condoned increased taxation on the middle class only to add to the War Chest and Corporate Welfare initiatives of America’s corrupt Empire.  I can also not imagine a world where Jesus would have condoned the constant condemnation and judgment of people everywhere who did not conform to the teachings of a Church deeply mired in control and manipulation. These “Christians”, operating under the guise of a righteous purpose, supposedly serving in His name, continue to gather en masse in order to bring to fruition their twisted version of Biblical teachings to promote only their unique brand of hatred.

As if the efforts to rekindle the Crusades of Old weren’t enough, these same daemons have taken up the cause of making criminal, gay marriage, any form of contraception and apparently, given the obscene, faux patriotic ramblings directed against a Mosque being built anywhere near “ground zero”, our Constitutional Freedom of Religion. In the same breath with which they profess the virtues of their religious morality, some promise to eliminate all social assistance and care for the least of those among us only to direct their ill gotten, blasphemous gains to the most “blessed” among us.  Is this the Christian reclamation so many speak of in America? Is this the flock of Christ come to save us from sin or the flock of Satan, meant only to control us so they can propagate their anti-Christian plans?

Religion always has been and I am most convinced, always will be, the greatest evil ever devised by Man.  Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the people but in the eyes of the religious right and their co-conspirators of control on the left, it is not a sedative but rather, a weapon of mass deception.  All one has to do to see the truth of this religion is look at the Vatican, Protestant Mega-churches and the ever increasing numbers of local ministries which have spread across this nation like a tax-free plague only to prophet from their flocks who blindly follow their misguided versions of Biblical rancor. Religion is quite simply, only a business meant to operate for profit no matter the cost to those who follow their deceptive ways.

There are of course, good “Christians in this world who truly believe in the teachings of their prophet and act in kind but they are not the ones controlling the money, the media or the political agendas.  Sadly, they are only the sheep who are slated to serve under the “guidance” of their preachers, priests and ministers no matter the message or the people hurt in their quest for righteousness.  If anything, these followers are worse off than those of us who wish not to associate with the devils of religion: They have become convinced that God is being served through the false teachings of their masters and have happily agreed to donate their money and energies to the cause only in an effort to earn a place within a fabled heaven floating upon the clouds of their personal delusion.  


Read also: God Has No Place In Politics
and God Is A Weapon

Deranged Angels Of Self-Preservation and the Second Amendment

by Phil Rockstroh

CommonDreams.org

In the contest between Stupid and Evil, Stupid reaps far more destruction. Why? Stupid prevails by the sheer force of numbers in its ranks.

But the argument is moot: Because all too often Stupid is working for Evil…believing it is serving as a force for good…and, I might add, for degrading wages as well.

German born filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) insisted to her dying breath that her 1936 masterwork of visual bravura, "Olympia," documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin, Germany, and funded and promoted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state, was not a political film nor was intended as propaganda for the Third Reich…as writer/director Christopher Nolan is claiming his “The Dark Knight Rises” is not a political movie.

Yet, for some reason, the villains of the movie just happen to resemble the febrile stuff of right-wing delusion regarding Occupy Wall Street activists, and the beleaguered victims of the movie's vengeance-seeking, blood-drunk rabble's reign of mindless terror happen to resemble the denizens of the One Percent.

The Road to Oligarchy

by Bernie Sanders

HuffingtonPost.com

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held a hearing Tuesday on "Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs" Here is Sen. Bernie Sanders' testimony:

Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening a hearing on the monumentally important issue of "Taking Back Our Democracy." Unfortunately, that title exactly describes the challenge facing us today.

The history of this country has been the drive toward a more and more inclusive democracy -- a democracy which would fulfill Abraham Lincoln's beautiful phraseology at Gettysburg in which he described America as a nation "of the people by the people for the people."

We all know American democracy has not always lived up to this ideal. When this country was founded, only white male property owners over age 21 could vote. But people fought to change that and we became a more inclusive democracy. After the Civil War, we amended the Constitution to allow non-white men to vote. We became a more inclusive democracy. In 1920, after years of struggle and against enormous opposition, we finally ratified the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote. We became a more inclusive democracy.