Our Unfinished March The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote-A History, a Crisis, a Plan

He is also now the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and the author of Our Unfinished March, The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote, a history, a crisis, a plan.

It's a history, a crisis and a plan. It's about arguably our most important right, our ability to vote to decide who represents us and our representative government which has been under siege not since the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County versus Holder which gutted the 1965 voting rights act but you could argue that the right to vote has been in peril literally since America founded.

That's really kind of the point of the book. There are crises that we have faced in the past and we've met those crises because people decided that they were going to commit themselves, sacrifice put their lives on the line and make this country better protect democracy.

And I think we can do it, we can do it again.

Sammy just worked on this book...with Attorney General Eric Holder and that book are unfinished March the violent past and imperiled future of the vote is a fascinating look at the fight for voter rights in America arguably the most important right that we have.

And I really wanted to have this conversation with Sammy not just because the book is great and the issues it talks about are important but I'm interested in young people who are doing things.

I start you know looking into the first third of the book which is the history of voting rights quickly changed my mindset on all these issues.

These people who are giving up and assuming we can't do anything. New compare it to the agency of the folks at the beginning of our country and it's not even close.

And so you look at in those moments how those people channels courage and decided to not give up and maintain some sense of agency and autonomy. And then you'll look at us now and we have absolutely no excuse.

So, congratulations on the new book, a very important book, our unfinished march, the violent past and imperiled future of the vote.

And as you say, the right to vote is the right that ensures all our other rights.

I think those three cases will be viewed 50 years from now, maybe shorter than that, in the same way that we look now at the, I'm getting a little too technical, at the Lochner era cases of the Supreme Court in the early part of the 20th century.

And then we'll get to the particular scenario of gerrymandering that you talk about a lot in your book, our unfinished march.

It's always something that I tweet about on the day of that anniversary to remind people of people like Vivian whose names are not maybe known to us now, but who are nevertheless architects of the better America in which we all live.