Saturday, March 11, 11:30-2pm, 1550 Old Henderson Rd., Ste. W200 [Secular Student Alliance office]

This month’s program: “Columbus’s Discriminatory At-Large City Council Elections”

Under pressure from constituents and from the federal government, every other large city in America has abandoned the at-large system of electing city council members that had been an early 20th century reform. While at-large voting systems were originally pushed by business magnates and social elites in part to maintain Irish and Anglo political control of cities from newly-arriving German and Italian immigrants, demographic changes through the 20th century, along with this form of government, resulted in the political disenfranchisement of Black Americans, which was made unlawful in most circumstances by the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Austin, Texas and Columbus, Ohio have maintained their at-large voting systems in part through political manipulations of both candidates and the electorate process to avoid flagrant Voting Rights Act violation. Learn more about the history of at-large city elections and Columbus, and challenge your thinking about our community as we expose the systems and strategies its powerful have used to fool the people into an embrace of this relic of our country’s nativist, nationalistic and racist past.

Jonathan C. Beard works to promote opportunity for all people. For the past 20 years, he has served as President and CEO of Columbus Compact Corporation, overseeing and implementing strategies designed to revitalize Columbus’s most distressed neighborhoods. The insights and experiences of that position led him to promote and co-chair the Issue 1 campaign for electoral reform in August 2016 — the first time citizens had put a charter amendment proposal on the ballot.

Join us at 11:30am for pizza; the meeting begins at 12noon.