the halfway point

So this past week has been very busy at the Lawyers' Committee. I've been working with the new Campaign Manager to refine our outreach strategies and to update our website. In addition to my usual web updating and press clips duties, I've also been working with another staff attorney on a new investigation. The Lawyers' Committee has been extensively involved in a small town called prairie view in Waller County, Texas. In the town, there is a predominantly African-American student body at the university whose population dwarfs that of the town's inhabitants. there have been many occasions in the past where local officials have obstructed the African-American students' right to vote, including intimidating students with threats of felony prosecutions (in fact, two students were indicted by a grand jury for trying to vote; the charges were later dropped), reducing the amount of time for early voting (from two days with 16 hours total to one day with only 8 hours), and moving the polling place far off campus. On each of those occasions, the Lawyers' Committee has intervened and successfully defended the rights of the African-American students (most recently during last year's midterm elections). For the upcoming 2008 elections, we are trying to move the polling place for the town onto the university campus' new student activities center. i am currently researching the long history of discrimination the students have endured and compiling a document that will help with our efforts of maintaining the students' access to the polls during elections.