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bloody sunday
Dem Leaders Urged to Mark Bloody Sunday by Acting on Voting Rights, Economic Justice
"This is no time for foolishness, photo-ops, and flaky commitments," declares a letter from faith leaders including Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Poor People's Campaign.
Feb 20, 2023
" Selma is sacred ground. It is, in a very real sense, the delivery room where the possibility of a true democracy was born. It is no place to play or to be for political pretense. Either you're serious or not. If you're coming, come on Sunday, the actual day of remembrance. If you're coming, come with a commitment to fight for what these people were willing to give their lives for."
That's the message that faith and rights leaders sent in a Monday letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and members of Congress ahead of the anniversary of Bloody Sunday—when white police officers violently assaulted civil rights advocates, including future Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama on March 7, 1965.
The sign-on letter is led by the co-chairs of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival—Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis—along with former Democratic Alabama state Sen. Hank Sanders, Faya Rose Touré, Rev. Mark Thompson, Rebecca Marion, and Rev. Carolyn Foster. It is open for signature on the Repairers of the Breach website.
"#SelmaIsSacredGround, not a place for political pretense."
"This is a critical year in the life of our country," the seven initial signatories wrote. "On the one hand, the president and progressive members of Congress have fought to pass policies that have lifted up Americans in many ways. From Covid relief measures to infrastructure investments to child tax credits that lifted millions of children out of poverty (for a brief moment) to the appointment of the first Black woman Supreme Court Justice, we can celebrate some real progress."
"But, on the other hand, with a Democratic president and control of the House and Senate for two years, Democratic leadership was unable to raise the federal minimum wage," they continued, also noting that a few obstructionist Democrats repeatedly helped Senate Republicans block efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act by supporting the filibuster.
That obstruction, they explained, enabled "regressive legislative bodies across the nation to pass more voter suppression bills than any time since Jim Crow and to go through another round of dangerous redistricting, which nullifies the potential power of progressive voting coalitions by stacking and packing votes in certain districts to predetermine outcomes before any vote is cast."
\u201cAhead of the 58th anniv. of Bloody Sunday, @brepairers is joined in this call by Rev. Liz Theoharis @liztheo, Hank Sanders, Faya Rose Toure, Rev. Mark Thompson @ministter, Rebecca Marion, Board Chair, Bridge Crossing Jubilee, Rev. Carolyn Foster of the @AlabamaPPC, and others.\u201d— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II) 1676925038
Highlighting research that shows tens of millions of Americans face some form of voter suppression, the letter leaders argue that if Biden and other politicians plan to visit Selma—which was recently devastated by a tornado—for the Bloody Sunday anniversary, they should "declare that the fight for voting rights and the restoration of what they marched across that bridge for is not over."
The letter also demands urgent action on living wages and investments in rural areas, stressing that millions of people—particularly in Southern states—live "in poverty and low-wealth conditions" and remain "uninsured or underinsured at a time when we have more people on healthcare than ever before," three years into the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Those of us who are planning to be in Selma to honor the struggle for voting rights and economic justice should be willing to protest and engage nonviolently if politicians attempt to do moral harm to the memory and the sacredness of what happened on Bloody Sunday," declares the letter. "This is no time for foolishness, photo-ops, and flaky commitments."
"Let us be clear: To honor the memory of Bloody Sunday is to work for the full restoration of the Voting Rights Act, the passage of the original For the People Act that John Lewis helped to write, not the bill that was watered down by Joe Manchin," the letter continues, calling out the pro-filibuster West Virginia Democrat infamous for thwarting his own party's agenda.
"To commemorate Bloody Sunday," the letter adds, "is to commit to raising of the minimum wage to a living wage, to ensuring that every American has adequate healthcare, and to enacting economic development that touches poor and low-wealth communities."
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Anniversary of Selma Should Remind Americans How Democracy Is Defended
African Americans won the right to vote because we and our allies marched for it, demonstrated for it, were beaten and died to gain it. After Selma, people of conscience demanded that the country live up to its Constitution and its democratic ideals.
Mar 08, 2022
Politicians for both parties loudly praise the courage of Ukrainians defending their democracy from the Russian invasion. Yet, bipartisan defense of democracy disappears when the question is democracy at home. Mar. 7 marked the 57th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" in 1965, when the police attack of a peaceful march of Blacks seeking the right to vote in Selma, Alabama, stirred the outrage that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.
At stake is the direction of the country. Republicans have voted against raising the minimum wage, paid family leave, support for families with children, affordable day care, affordable prescription drugs, and fair taxes on the rich.
Today the right to vote is once more in question.
We witness the second great drive to suppress voting in American history. The first came after the Civil War, when the constitutional amendment to free the slaves and guarantee the right to vote to African Americans sparked a vicious reaction across the South to enforce segregation and suppress the right to vote.
Today, Republican politicians are making it harder to vote, particularly for those in urban areas, on Native American reservations and on college campuses. In July 2021, the Brennan Center reported that lawmakers had introduced at least 389 restrictive bills in 48 states in the 2021 legislative sessions, while 17 states enacted 28 new laws that restrict voting access.
Partisan gerrymandering has been given a free pass by right-wing judges on the Supreme Court. Worse, election officials are under assault. One in six have received threats of violence; one in three say they feel unsafe. As President Joe Biden declared, "We're facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War."
The reason for the assault is clear. After 2020, Republicans know that they are the minority and their prospects are getting worse with younger, more diverse voters. In the last presidential election, Donald Trump captured a stunning 74 million votes, but Joe Biden won 81 million.
When the House of Representatives took up legislation to revive the Voting Rights Act, what used to enjoy bipartisan support was passed, but with a partisan divide. Similarly, when the Senate considered the For the People Act to create federal safeguards on voting rights, limit the role of secret money in politics and rein in gerrymandering, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah described it as a bill "written in Hell by the Devil himself." Republicans used a filibuster to block passage of both bills.
The anniversary of Selma reminds us of how democracy is defended. Southern senators blocked any reforms at the federal level for years. In the states, police and organized terror enforced the suppression of Black votes.
African Americans won the right to vote because we and our allies marched for it, demonstrated for it, were beaten and died to gain it. And finally, after Selma, people of conscience demanded that the country live up to its Constitution and its democratic ideals. That is when President Lyndon Johnson could overcome the filibuster and pass the Voting Rights Act.
If the new voter suppression effort is to be overcome, it won't come from the White House or Congress. The Justice Department will do its best, but will face obstruction from right-wing judges. In states controlled by Republicans, the onslaught is brazen and clear.
What is needed now is massive, unrelenting, passionate organizing to register people to vote and to get them to the polls. Mobilized people won't be intimidated. With organization, the tricks and traps passed to suppress the vote can be overcome. Workers will have to sacrifice if early voting hours are restricted. Urban voters will have to put up with long lines, since polling sites are being eliminated. Mail-in ballots will face more obstacles. College students may need to organize the ID needed to qualify to vote on their campuses.
At stake is the direction of the country. Republicans have voted against raising the minimum wage, paid family leave, support for families with children, affordable day care, affordable prescription drugs, and fair taxes on the rich. They oppose action on catastrophic climate change. They vote against reproductive choice, civil rights, environmental and worker protections. They oppose tuition-free college and student debt relief.
All of these are supported by the vast majority of Americans. So, Republicans try to make voting harder.
We don't have to risk the bullets of the Ku Klux Klan or the billy clubs of Southern sheriffs as the marchers of Selma faced. We do have to organize to make our voices heard and our votes cast and counted. Historically, the core of the reform majority--African Americans, Hispanics, single women, the young--turn out in smaller numbers in off-year elections.
We can't afford that this year. At stake is literally what kind of country we will live in.
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Follow John Lewis: Don't Let Trump Provoke Violence
If we want to win, we can't let Trump provoke us into violence.
Aug 02, 2020
John Lewis, the Georgia Congressman who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was one of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington, is being remembered as one of our greatest American heroes, in large part because he was willing to risk his life in non-violent protests against white supremacy.
Lewis was arrested over 40 times in non-violent sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and protests. On March 7, 1965, his skull was fractured, and he was almost murdered, by an Alabama state trooper when he led 600 peaceful civil rights protestors on a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand voting rights.
Lewis and the other nonviolent protestors were brutally attacked by mounted police armed with clubs, whips, and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire as they peacefully tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
The violent images of this horrendous, unprovoked police brutality against peaceful protestors were broadcast on the national network news that night to over 60 million viewers, and outraged much of the nation. The images, when broadcast worldwide, also publicly shamed the United States on the world stage.
Lewis and the other protestors would have been within their moral rights to have returned the next day armed with rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and even firearms to protect themselves from such police brutality. But whether or not one is a pacifist, to have responded to force with force would have been political disaster for the civil rights movement.
Instead, Rev. Martin Luther King returned to Selma two weeks later to complete the march for voting rights that Lewis had started. On March 25, King led 25,000 nonviolent protestors the steps of the State Capitol in Montgomery, where he delivered his now-famous How Long, Not Long speech:
Once more, the method of nonviolent resistance was unsheathed from its scabbard, and once again an entire community was mobilized to confront the adversary. And again the brutality of a dying order shrieks across the land. Yet, Selma, Alabama, became a shining moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked in its dark street, the best of American instincts arose passionately from across the nation.
These images, too, were seen across the country and around the world. Today, the brave sacrifice of Lewis and his fellow nonviolent protestors is largely credited for the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, This landmark legislation, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting, is the cornerstone of defending the right to vote guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, but has been eroded in recent years by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Today, Donald Trump has opened a full frontal attack on voting rights, threatening to delay or even suspend elections. In a transparent attempt to scare suburban whites into reelecting him, Trump is doing everything in his power to provoke antiracist protestors in Portland and other cities to forsake nonviolent protest and engage in violent resistance to the heavily armed federal officers in full camouflage uniforms he has ordered into American cities.
Let's be clear: Camouflage uniforms are designed to provide disguise in jungle warfare, not to intimidate protestors on the streets of American cities. But that's exactly what Trump is using them for. Sending in unidentified, camouflage-wearing federal agents to seize peaceful protestors off the streets is straight out of the playbook of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sent "little green men"--unidentified Russian troops--to invade the Ukraine in 2014.
Sending Federal troops into American streets is Kabuki theater--reality television--by Trump. He wants to create TV images that appear to reflect urban carnage. TV footage of protestors attacking camouflage-wearing police and federal officers with Molotov cocktails, rocks, and bricks is exactly what Trump wants. (It wouldn't even surprise me if Trump has undercover agents provoking protestors to use violence.)
If we want to win, we can't let Trump provoke us into violence. We must honor John Lewis, and his hard-won victories for civil rights, by following his example of nonviolent resistance.
One can have academic arguments about whether violence is ever acceptable to fight injustice. I would personally argue that at least in the cases of the American Revolution, The Civil War, and World War II, violence was necessary. Others may differ.
But right now, violent protests would be the gift to Trump that he's begging for. Don't give it to him.
The street violence of the late 1960s was used by Republican operatives to pave the way for Richard Nixon's election as president in 1968. The implementation of the "Southern Strategy" of stoking irrational fears of Black people among poor and working-class whites to cement them to the Republican Party led right up to Trump's 2016 victory, and is still with us today.
The 1967 riots in major cities like Newark, Detroit, and Milwaukee, the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, and the police riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention all contributed to Richard Nixon's narrow victory. Nixon's victory consolidated power in a white supremacist oligarchy for the next half century.
Trump is on the ropes. Don't give him the gift of violent confrontations that he's so blatantly and transparently trying to provoke to rescue his campaign.
Honor John Lewis. Meet police brutality with nonviolent resistance.
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