An emphatic address directed to members of Congress by Virgin Islands Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett has started a new national conversation on poverty and voting rights in U.S. Territories.
Rep. Plaskett’s comments led a segment on voting rights in U.S. Territories on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday March, 8 2015, and has opened a new national dialogue on Voting Rights in the United States.
The congresswoman’s comments come in the wake of the 50th anniversary of the march on Selma, Alabama, known as Bloody Sunday, and the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and as the D.C. Circuit Court hears arguments in Tuaua v United States—a case that challenges a century old Supreme Court opinion used to exclude citizens of U.S. Territories from equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
