The saturated news coverage of Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Louisiana vs. Callais makes it difficult to say anything useful about its impact. Simply put, this is about Chief Justice John Roberts’ long-time goal—four decades in the making—to gut the Voting Rights Act.

In 2016, I asked, “Who is a progressive? Who is a ‘real’ progressive? Who will continue a progressive legacy?” I answered, “You are not a progressive unless you have read Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Iowa’s own Ari Berman.” Little has changed in 10 years. Here is an excerpt from my 2016 review:

In this extensively researched, easy to read text, Berman reminds many of us of the reason we became politically active: as a way of engaging in progress toward racial and social justice centered around the Voting Rights Act (VRA) signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.

There has been a concerted, well-planned effort to suppress provisions of the VRA. The June 25, 2013 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Section 4, which required certain states to get pre-clearance of changes to voting laws from the Department of Justice, was only the most obvious, recent incident. Berman’s account of the Nixon and Reagan administrations provides insight that de-fanging the law was part of Republican intent from the beginning. My reaction was incredulity at everything that was happening before my eyes without me understanding it.

Ari Berman, in Give Us the Ballot, traces Chief Justice Roberts’ involvement with voting rights issues back to his Reagan-era opposition to strengthening the Voting Rights Act in 1982, arguing that his later Supreme Court opinions reflect a consistent skepticism toward key provisions of the law.

Louisiana vs. Callais goes after Section 2.

Click here to read Amy Howe’s Decision Analysis at SCOTUSblog.

Click here to read Joyce Vance on the decision.

Learn the history by reading Berman’s book. Be a progressive by working for the changes we need in our government to restore the Voting Rights Act and protect everyone’s right to vote.