Jewish Groups Push Voting Rights Protection

By JTA October 23, 2013

Bend the Arc and a foundation named for slain civil rights activist Andrew Goodman are teaming to help protect voting rights and promote civic engagement.

The Andrew Goodman Foundation and Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice launched their partnership this week to increase Jewish participation in a national, multiracial, interfaith and intergenerational coalition. They will work together for the next two years.

Andrew Goodman was killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964.

“Bend the Arc is excited to work closely with The Andrew Goodman Foundation over the next two years to reanimate the values that drove Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, and James Chaney – two Jews and an African-American Christian – along with thousands of Americans to work across lines of race and faith in the civil rights movement,” said Alan van Capelle, Bend the Arc’s CEO, as the partnership was launched this week.

Sylvia Goodman, the Goodman Foundation’s executive director, said her organization was excited as well to partner with Bend the Arc “not only to advocate for voting rights legislation in Washington, D.C., but also to inspire a new generation with the message that ordinary people can make extraordinary social impact.”

Their efforts in the next two years will be centered on the 50th anniversaries of the 1964 Freedom Summer and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

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