People For Member,
John Lewis was not just a civil rights legend to me – he was a friend and a source of inspiration. This past weekend, on the anniversary of John’s passing, we celebrate his life, his bravery and hard-won accomplishments, and his tireless fight for voting rights.
In the year since John passed, far-right state legislators have pushed the most aggressive wave of voter suppression laws since Jim Crow, aimed primarily at Black and brown voters. Now, as we honor John’s legacy, we’re looking to two bills to help fix what far-right lawmakers are trying to break: the For the People Act (S. 1) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
We need both bills to pass to have a chance at stopping the recent slew of voter suppression laws from disenfranchising voters and keeping others from being passed in the future. Let me explain why.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act – renamed as such after his passing – is designed to reestablish and strengthen the federal review requirements from the original VRA that were gutted by two appalling Supreme Court decisions, Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and Brnovich v. DNC this year. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is crucial, specifically for preventing future state-enacted barriers to voting from taking effect.
The For the People Act will undo the current harm many state legislatures have already done through enactment of draconian voter suppression bills. It does this by putting into place national voting rights standards long championed by John Lewis himself. And it also addresses other critical democracy reforms, for example, setting limits on billionaires’ ability to buy our elections.
In a posthumous op-ed, John wrote that: “Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part.” This is how we will do our part: We will fight for these voting rights protections.
We must remember John Lewis’s sacrifices and his lived testament: be bold, be courageous, be hopeful, and never stop stirring up good trouble, because together we can make the promise of America real.
Thank you for fighting with us in John’s honor to defend our voting rights. We’ll need your help to get these bills across the finish line.
In unity,
Ben Jealous, President
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