Like President Lyndon Baines Johnson before him, President Joe Biden is going to need a push from civil rights and voting rights activists to create a groundswell of public pressure on him to act on voting rights legislation, in this case, to call on the Senate to reform or repeal the Jim Crow relic Senate filibuster rule.
President Biden has given soaring speeches about voting rights, but words are not deeds. The “fierce urgency of now” calls for swift action to save American democracy from the growing threat of authoritarian fascism from the GQP.
The New York Times reports, Activist groups pressure Biden to pursue voting rights laws ‘by whatever means necessary.’
A quiet divide between President Biden and the leaders of the voting rights movement burst into the open on Thursday, as 150 organizations urged him to use his political mettle to push for two expansive federal voting rights bills that would combat a Republican wave of balloting restrictions.
In the letter, signed by civil rights groups including the Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, activists argued that with the “ideal of bipartisan cooperation on voting rights” nowhere to be found in a sharply divided Senate, Mr. Biden must “support the passage of these bills by whatever means necessary.”
The issue is of paramount importance to Democrats: Republicans have passed roughly 30 laws in states across the country this year that are expected to make voting harder, especially in Black and Latino communities, which lean Democratic. Several of the laws give state legislators more power over how elections are run and make it easier to challenge the results.
In a fiery speech in Philadelphia last week, Mr. Biden warned that the GQP effort was the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”
When the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. met with President LBJ in the White House to discuss voting rights, LBJ told him that his Great Society programs took precedence right now; voting rights would have to wait, but “I support your goals.”
The Reverend King told the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement that “we are going to Plan B,” a march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama in the heart of George Wallace’s Jim Crow segregationist South to draw public attention to voting rights for Black Americans.
Some 56 years later, history rhymes. (“History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” – Mark Twain). We are knee-deep into “infrastructure week,” instead of “voting rights week.”
Bishop William Barber II, the leader of “The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival,” and the affiliated Texas Poor People’s Campaign and its partners are planning a Georgetown-to-Austin Moral March for Democracy culminating in a Rally at the Texas State Capitol on Saturday, July 31 @ 10am CT. See, We Are the Moral Resurrection! Georgetown-to-Austin March for Democracy:
In the spirit of the Selma-to-Montgomery March of 1965, we are marching to send a message to Washington, D.C.: We demand the U.S. Senate and the White House act now to stop the attacks on our democracy. We want all of our rights, and we want them now! We must resist the extremist and monied powers that want to deny, abridge, and undermine all of our votes. The fight for voting rights and economic justice are one in the same. Join us for this historic march in Texas!
This march and rally is part of A Season of Nonviolent Moral Direct Action led by the Poor People’s Campaign and dozens of partners. Go to action.poorpeoplescampaign.org for more information and updates.
Schedule of Events
July 21 @ 1pm CT – News Conference Announcing Georgetown-to-Austin March for Democracy
July 25 @ 4pm CT – Joint worship service at Community of Faith Church in Houston, TX with Greenleaf Christian Church and Friendship-West Baptist Church.
July 27 @ 6pm CT – Evening service and press conference to launch the 3-day march from Georgetown to Austin. Location TBA
July 28-31 @ 8am CT- March begins at 8am CT each morning and finishes for the day in the early afternoon.
July 31 @ 10am CT- Join a mass rally at the end of the Georgetown-to-Austin March for Democracy at the Texas State Capitol.
More from Bishop Barber’s Repairers Of The Breach organization. UPDATE: Selma-to-Montgomery type march planned in Texas by Poor People’s Campaign:
The Poor People’s Campaign to Organize Selma-to-Montgomery style walk in Texas to challenge attacks on the right to vote; route will include 27-mile trek from Georgetown to Austin, Texas
Note new date, time for call with Revs. Barber, Theoharis
As Democratic legislators in Texas fled the state in search of federal assistance pushing back on anti-voting measures there, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II met with grassroots groups in Texas to plan a Selma-to-Montgomery style march in the state. The march will be held July 27 through July 30, and span 27 miles from Georgetown to Austin, the state capital. It will include members of the Poor People’s Campaign, including clergy, religious and moral leaders, who earlier called for a season of nonviolent direct action in support of voting rights, a $15 minimum wage, and an end to the filibuster.
To learn more about the march, join a briefing with Rev. Dr. Barber and his communications team on Wednesday, July 21 at 2:00 p.m. ET.
WHO: Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and other members of the Poor People’s Campaign
WHAT: Press Briefing re Poor People’s Campaign, 27 mile ‘Selma to Montgomery’ Style March for Voting Rights in Texas
WHEN: Wednesday, July 21 at 2:00 p.m. ET
Civil rights leaders and Beto O'Rourke plan Selma-style march to Austin https://t.co/kFiO1RbTeK
— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) July 22, 2021
Houston Chronicle (paid subscriber content). Civil rights leaders and Beto O’Rourke plan Selma-style march to Austin.
KTSM in El Paso reports, Beto O’Rourke to join Civil Rights leaders in march to Austin as voting rights battle wages on:
Former U.S. Congressman, Beto O’Rourke, is joining clergy, civil rights leaders, and more in a Selma-style march to Austin.
“This is the epicenter in the fight for the right to vote. We have the toughest voting and election laws in the country, bar none,” said O’Rourke during a press conference on Thursday.
“It’s tougher to vote in Texas than in any other state,” he added.
O’Rourke is joining a coalition of voting rights advocates, Texas Democrats, and others to organize a three-day march that echoes the 1965 march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where civil rights advocates, like the late U.S. Representative John Lewis, were beaten by local police.
“It is time to nationalize what’s going on in Texas,” said the Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the new Poor People’s Campaign, an extension of a group that was organized by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The march will start on Wednesday, July 28, 2021, where participants will walk 27 miles from Georgetown to the state capitol in Austin over the course of three days, the march concluding Friday, July 31, 2021.
The march comes as Democrats and Republicans in Texas continue to battle over legislation that would restrict voting laws, which are already tight in Texas.
Last week, Democratic members of the Texas House and Senate fled the Capitol to avoid voting on Senate Bill 1 — the controversial voting bill — which has caused continued discord between the parties.
Democrats argue the elections bill will effectively disenfranchise voters and entire communities of color, calling it “Jim Crow 2.0” because of the extensive restrictions it would impose.
The Texas Attorney General’s office — headed by [the under indictment and FBI investigation] Ken Paxton — found only 16 cases of false addresses out of 11 million voter registration forms in 2020.
Still, the state GQP persists in the “voter fraud” fraud.
On Thursday, two dozen House Republicans voted in-favor of legislation that would require a third-party review of 2020 election results in large counties [i.e., a Texas “fraudit” of Democratic counties where minority voters live].
Democrats continue to resist Republican-led efforts to upset election results and restrict voting law by pushing passage of “The For the People Act,” which is a federal bill that would expand voting rights, ban partisan gerrymandering, create new ethics rules for federal office holders, and change campaign finance laws.
State Senator Cesar J. Blanco of El Paso supports it, and was in D.C. with fellow Texas Democratic lawmakers to discuss with federal legislators.
“Our meetings with leaders in the United States House of Representatives and Senate were encouraging,” said Blanco in a statement sent to KTSM, “and I believe we moved the needle on the passage of federal legislation that will protect the sacred right to vote for all Americans.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris should join this march to drive home to Democratic senators that it is time for the Jim Crow relic Senate filibuster rule to go to protect the fundamental constitutional right to vote. It would be a powerful moral statement.
Or President Biden, Like LBJ before him, could address a joint session of Congress and demand the passage of voting rights legislation. Action is required in this moment of peril.
When Reverend King finally made it to Montgomery, he delivered a powerful speech from the steps of the State Capitol building. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., “HOW LONG? NOT LONG” (25 MARCH 1965) (excerpt):
I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody’s asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?” Somebody’s asking, “When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?”
I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”
How long? Not long, because “you shall reap what you sow.”
How long? Not long:
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
How long? Not long, because:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat.
O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Glory, hallelujah! Glory, hallelujah!
Glory, hallelujah! Glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on. [Applause]
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