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Today, we look at student loan forgiveness at HBCUs, report on GOP efforts to prosecute voters, and review the sparkling film Summer of Soul.

 THE TAKE 

Historically Black colleges and universities have found a way to turn their federal emergency education relief into savings for their students. It’s a move similar to one activists have long demanded from the federal government itself – canceling student loan debt. 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that on Friday, Clark Atlanta University announced it will use the funding it received from the CARES Act Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund to clear out student tuition balances for its 2020 semesters and spring and summer 2021 semesters. The university was joined by another Atlanta HBCU on Tuesday, when Spelman College announced it will clear out student tuition balances owed for the 2020-2021 academic year. Spelman also said it will discount tuition for 2021-2022 by 14%, and reduce its mandatory fees to its rate from the 2017-2018 academic year.

According to Good Morning America, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University are the latest of more than 20 HBCUs that have used federal CARES funding to provide students with financial relief. Last year, the CARES Act Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund allocated $14.25 billion to higher education institutions nationwide, with the requirement that at least 50% of funds go to students negatively impacted by the pandemic. 

But not all universities have taken this egalitarian approach to pandemic financial aid. Some schools required students to apply for aid and, in other extreme cases, like at Harvard University, schools have declined the funding they were allocated.

HBCUs passing along the CARES funding to their students seems like an obvious choice given America’s $1.7 trillion in student debt with no forgiveness in sight. On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dinged the idea of a student debt cancelation, evoking the perspective of someone without loans. 

“Suppose your … child just decided at this time they did not want to go to college, but you’re paying taxes to forgive somebody else’s obligations. You may not be happy about that,” Pelosi said.

— Samantha Grasso (@samjgrasso)

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 ELECTION WATCH 

🏛 Why does the GOP want to prosecute voters? 

An election official scans a mail in ballot while tallying votes for the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Marfa, Texas, U.S., November 3, 2020. [Reuters/Adrees Latif]

40 years in prison for voting? It could happen in Texas.

In mid-July, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced charges against Hervis Rogers, a Black Houston resident who waited over six hours to vote in November 2020. According to Paxton’s office, the 62-year-old allegedly voted in the 2020 primary and in 2018 while on parole, in violation of a Texas law banning people from casting ballots until they have completed their sentences. Voting advocates immediately questioned the decision to bring charges, especially given Rogers’ claim that he did not knowingly vote while ineligible. Rogers faces more than 40 years in prison if he is convicted.

While Paxton is trying to draw attention to Rogers’ alleged crime, the charges are already being used as ammunition to further the GOP’s effort to pass restrictive voting laws that would have a disproportionate impact on nonwhite communities. Texas Republicans are currently trying to push through a restrictive law that would enact strict ID requirements for mail-in ballots, ban drive-thru voting and restrict early voting hours, among other measures. Paxton, who supports the effort, has been one of former President Donald Trump’s fiercest supporters, advancing his Big Lie that President Joe Biden actually lost the election.

“It’s clear that Ken Paxton cares nothing about Hervis Rogers and is using him as a political pawn to score points with Republican officials in Texas and nationally,” said Nicole Porter, director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project, a group focused on decarceration. “What Ken Paxton needs to understand is that Mr. Rogers is a person and subjecting him to a potential 40-year prison term is obscene.”

While voter fraud charges are extremely rare – a recent Bloomberg analysis found that prosecutors across the country have brought voter fraud charges just about 200 times since the November 2018 elections – it has not stopped Republicans from exaggerating the problem and looking for rare examples to support their false claims.

In Arizona, Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced felony charges against Guillermina Fuentes and Alma Juarez, two Latina women he accused of collecting four ballots and bringing them to a drop box in Yuma County. Arizona’s ballot harvesting law, which the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld, prohibits residents from returning ballots for people other than themselves and their relatives. The two women were indicted in December and face up to two years in prison. Brnovich does not allege that they tampered with the ballots or did anything to interfere with the votes being cast – just that they helped people who live in a rural community where many lack access to transportation.

“It is disappointing that the Attorney General is using the state’s limited resources to criminally prosecute two women for possessing approximately 4 ballots with no allegation of fraud,” Anne Chapman, an attorney for Fuentes, told me in an email earlier this year. “We can’t help but observe that this prosecution targets the community of San Luis, which is over 95% Hispanic.”

Voting advocates also pointed to the fact that when the charges were brought, Republicans were trying to convince the Supreme Court to keep Arizona’s ballot harvesting ban intact and to issue a ruling making it easier for Republicans to get away with restrictive voting policies. The strategy seemed to work, and in June, the high court made it harder for those who challenge voting laws to prove intentional racial discrimination.

With this new green light from the Supreme Court, Republicans are no doubt going to ramp up their efforts to restrict voting to help them win future elections. Even if Rogers can avoid conviction by proving that he didn’t knowingly vote while ineligible, the damage will be done. Black voters in Texas or other states may think twice before casting ballots for fear that they too will be targeted with criminal charges and used as political pawns. And the Republican Party will be able to talk about Rogers as an example of voter fraud, despite ample evidence that fraud is exceedingly rare and almost never sways elections.

— Kira Lerner (@kira_lerner)

 POPCORN FOR DINNER 

📺 Soundtrack to a revolution

Reviewed: Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) 2021, Directed by Questlove

Woodstock is a major part of the white boomer story of the ‘60s, a high-water mark of hippie counterculture and a “generation-defining” event. It’s part of a general narrative about the ‘60s that centers the (majority white) Vietnam War peace movement and “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.” In popular narratives, the Black struggle is limited to the civil rights movement from 1955-65, and, perhaps, the Black Panther Party in the late ‘60s. Erased are the world historic Black uprisings, rebellions and riots – 750 in all – that took place from 1964-68, and the massive cultural, political and social transformations that came in their midst.

1969’s “Summer of Love” featured another massive musical and arts event: the Harlem Cultural Festival. It has been erased from the narrative of the ‘60s, despite the fact that, in 2021, the artists who played that festival seem more influential than the rock and folk acts of Woodstock.

Luckily, the festival was fully filmed and documented, and the tapes and events sit in obscurity no longer. The stunning footage has been assembled into a powerful documentary, Summer of Soul (or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. The film incorporates political contexts both radical (e.g; the Black Panther Party’s presence as security) and critical (one interviewee admits city government support for the festival may well have been aimed at keeping Black youth in NYC from rising up).

This context, however, is beautifully incorporated into what is mostly a concert film. Questlove’s clear admiration and love for the music, the festival, the footage and its preservation leads to a light conceptual touch, just enough to keep things moving, but not enough to distract from the event itself.

And the event was truly epochal, featuring performances from huge musical acts like Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Gladys Knight & the Pips, B.B. King and climaxing in an incredible set from Nina Simone. As we are in another important decade of Black uprisings, the celebration of previous eras of Black art, struggle, culture and history remains a crucial task in framing the possibilities of abolition and liberation.

Vicky Osterweil

 WHAT WE'RE READING 

The economics of Black pop culture. [Current Affairs]

What if you didn’t have to be a citizen to vote? [New York Times]

On violence and femininity. [New York Review of Books

A new lesson in digital self-defense. [The Intercept]

This one weird trick will let you protest at the Olympics. [Teen Vogue]

 POSTSCRIPT 

Should we kiss the toxic fashion norms of the Y2K era bye, bye, bye? [Harper’s Bazaar]

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Samantha Grasso, Sarah Leonard, Isra Rahman and Alexia Underwood. Send us your tips, questions and comments to subtext@ajplus.net.

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