Correspondent photo / Sean Barron Lisa Lee Kohler of the League of Women Voters of Greater Youngstown speaks during a news conference Monday outside of the Mahoning County Board of Elections in Youngstown regarding recent attacks on voting rights. Looking on is Youngstown City Council President Anita Davis.

YOUNGSTOWN — A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has further crippled the Voting Rights Act of 1965 while moving it a significant step closer to being on life support, a longtime area religious leader said.

“Here we are, 61 years later, watching the clock being methodically turned back,” the Rev. Kenneth L. Simon of the Community Mobilization Coalition, said.

Simon, who also pastors New Bethel Baptist Church on the South Side, was referring to what he and many others see as the damaging effects and aftermath of the high court’s April 29 landmark Louisiana v. Callais decision. The major damage from the 6-3 decision was that it eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Simon noted during a news conference Monday outside of the Mahoning County Board of Elections office in Oakhill Renaissance Place, 345 Oak Hill Ave., on the South Side.

Also represented were the League of Women Voters of Greater Youngstown and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Planning Committee of the Greater Mahoning Valley, along with several religious and community leaders.

Section 2 prohibits discriminatory voting procedures or practices based on race, color or minority status that results in the abridgment of the right to vote. That provision was added to the VRA, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law Aug. 6, 1965, “to ensure fair representation for minority groups,” Simon explained, adding that the high court’s move earlier this year also will open the door for other states to gerrymander some of their congressional districts and engage in wrongful redistricting practices to give an unfair advantage to one political party over the other — something that will disproportionately adversely affect minority voters.

“This has the potential to throw us back to the Jim Crow era,” the pastor said, adding that the majority decision was the culmination of decades of conservative efforts to damage the VRA and allow states to further engage in “voting rollbacks.”

“The decision was a devastating blow to critical civil rights protections by permitting states to use partisan gerrymandering as a wholesale excuse to deny black voters a voice in their government. The court’s decision threatens to further divide our nation and entrench power in the hands of a few,” the Legal Defense Fund’s website states.

At the end of his remarks, Simon engaged attendees in a chant of “Forward ever, backward never.”

“The Supreme Court has said it’s acceptable as long as you don’t say it out loud,” Lisa Lee Kohler, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters’ president, said about efforts to restrict voting rights.

The LWV is urging Congress to restore such rights, including Section 2, as well as safeguards that have protected against discrimination, both of which are “constitutional and democratic imperatives,” not privileges, Kohler said in her remarks.

She also called for the end to intentional efforts to dilute voting rights that include polling location closures, unlawful purges from voting rolls and a variety of other obstacles.

Such political shenanigans also are antithetical to Jesus Christ’s teachings, part of which centered around helping the poor and those less fortunate, the Rev. Michael Harrison, the Ohio Baptist Convention’s president, said.

“We’ve got to fight the good fight of faith,” Harrison repeated several times, adding that nowhere in the Bible does it talk about merely being concerned for those who are wealthy.

“Simply complaining won’t solve anything,” Jaladah Aslam, the Youngstown/Warren Black Caucus’ president and a Martin Luther King Jr. Planning Committee co-convener, said.

Numerous pieces of action are to take place this summer to address the problem, such as an initiative regarding registering new voters and checking voter registration information and statuses, Aslam noted. In addition, she urged churches and organizations to participate in a massive mobilization program for that purpose.

“There’s so much at stake. We cannot work in silence,” Aslam said, adding, “We all have to be singing from the same hymn book. The house is on fire, so there’s no time to be concerned about egos.”

A website is to be launched regarding the initiative. For now, people can visit the Ohio secretary of state’s website, www.ohsos.gov., and click the “Register to vote” tab, she noted.

Also, those seeking information pertaining to voting can visit www.vote411.org.

Simon noted that a virtual session to educate viewers about voting rights, as well as the ramifications of Louisiana v. Callais, is set for 6:30 p.m. June 29. A national Urban League representative is scheduled to be on the call, he said.