FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | October 27, 2020
On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a new issues- and policy-focused podcast featuring feminist analysis, insightful conversations and exciting guests. This is the first podcast from Ms. magazine, a legacy feminist publication.
In each bi-weekly episode, host Dr. Michele Goodwin and special guests will tackle the most compelling issues of our times, centering feminist concerns about rebuilding our nation and advancing the promise of equality.
A new episode—“Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired”: Voting Rights and Voter Suppression—is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and MsMagazine.com.
At the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, voting activist and civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer described the violent injustices she and others had endured while living under the South’s Jim Crow laws and fighting for the right to vote: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired!” Now, more than 50 years later and ahead of the 2020 election, we are seeing record early voting across the country. Even so, serious efforts aimed at voter suppression persist—including curbing access to mail-in voting and shutting down polling locations.
This week, Dr. Goodwin and her guests ask: what are the biggest threats to voting rights today? How is voter suppression showing up in the 2020 election? And what can we do to ensure that our elections remain free and fair?
Dr. Goodwin is joined by Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Judge Glenda Hatchett, who served as senior attorney at Delta Airlines before becoming the chief presiding judge of Fulton County Georgia Juvenile Court in Atlanta, and most recently returned to TV in her new series, The Verdict with Judge Hatchett; and Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center—and the first Black woman to hold that title.
Their conversation covered a wide range of topics; you can find a full transcript here, as well as a few excerpts below:
“I am old enough to remember a segregated South, having been born and raised in Georgia, and the first word that I learned to read as a child, besides my name, was ‘colored’… I am not going to wake up November 4th and say I wish I had tried just a little bit harder because I am sick and tired, and it’s got to change.” —Judge Glenda Hatchett, “The Verdict with Judge Hatchett”
“With the stripping of the Voting Rights Act, it put already marginalized and targeted communities in even more of a stretch. I feel like that’s so critically important to understanding the story.” —Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center
“We’re in different times now. We’ve got a Justice Department that is highly politicized, that is not enforcing the Voting Rights Act, and an Attorney General who, at times, acts like he is the lawyer for the President more than the lawyer for the people, as he should be. So, this time is like none other. Like none other.” —Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Meet the Host of On the Issues: Dr. Michele Goodwin is a frequent contributor to Ms. magazine and on MsMagazine.com. She is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and also serves on the executive committee and national board of the ACLU. Dr. Goodwin is a prolific author and an elected member of the American Law Institute, as well as an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Hastings Center. Her most recent book, Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood, is described as a “must read.”
About Ms. Magazine: Co-founded by Gloria Steinem in 1972 and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation since 2001, Ms. magazine has been a trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online for nearly 50 years. Ms.’s time-honored traditions of an emphasis on in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis have never been more relevant, bringing a new generation of writers and readers together to create the feminism of the future.
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If you would like more information on the On the Issues with Michele Goodwin podcast, or to schedule an interview with Host Michele Goodwin or Executive Producer & Ms. Executive Editor Katherine Spillar, please email press@msmagazine.com.
Launched in 1971, Ms. is the most trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online with a tradition of in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis. Ms. is wholly owned and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation.
