This year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the family of Dr King have called on us to focus on action. No Celebration, without legislation, is the rallying cry.
Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, and Yolanda Renee King, along with faith leaders, civil rights leaders, and voting rights advocates, are leading a march in DC to demand voting rights legislation on Monday. And they are earnestly asking every American of conscience to join them in calling on the Senate to protect our right to vote by passing the Freedom to Vote Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
For an entire year, Congress has promised to take action on these two bills, only to be blocked again and again by the Jim Crow Filibuster in the Senate. On Tuesday, President Biden went to Georgia and gave a strong speech on voting rights in which he correctly equated opponents of filibuster reform with segregationists and leaders of the Confederacy. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell reacted yesterday with sputtering outrage straight out of Strom Thurmond’s playbook. He called Biden’s speech “incoherent,” and ”profoundly — profoundly — unpresidential.”
But Biden isn’t wrong. From the Civil War to the Jim Crow era, the filibuster has blocked popular bills to stop lynching, end poll taxes, and fight workplace discrimination. Now it’s being used to block voting rights, again. As Martin King III has said: "The weaponization of the filibuster is racism cloaked in procedure and it must go."
That's why this week we’re joining the King family and a host of progressive groups to say No celebration without legislation. The Senate has a plan to force debate and a vote on the two voting rights reform bills this week. But it will all come down to a vote on or before MLK day on Monday January 17 on whether to reform the filibuster. Only Democratic votes are needed, but it’s essential that every American make their voice heard, right now. Click here or use the numbers above to call your Senator (both of them!) and the White House right now, before MLK day, and tell them: It’s time to end the filibuster and deliver on voting rights.
Sincerely
Drew and the 198 methods to expel all fascists crew