People For Member,
As we spend today honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it’s members of the U.S. Senate who need to be thinking long and hard about their own future legacies.
That’s because senators are being called on to meet this historic moment, when our democracy itself hangs in the balance, by affirming their commitment to free and fair elections and the right to vote.
Earlier this week, I traveled to Atlanta to watch President Biden and Vice President Harris embrace Dr. King’s legacy and history – in fact, the legacy and history of the entire civil rights movement.
The president chose Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater, as the venue for his powerful speech challenging U.S. senators to be on the right side of history by doing whatever it takes to pass urgently needed voting rights legislation. Morehouse is also in the district represented by the late John Lewis. Before the speech, the president and vice president visited Dr. King’s church.
In his speech, President Biden asked senators – and every elected official in America – how they want to be remembered… reminding them that consequential moments in history like the one we’re in right now present a clear choice:
“Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
The Senate plans to take up the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act this week. The bill combines the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which have languished in the Senate for months thanks to Republicans’ stubborn opposition and their abuse of the filibuster rule. President Biden used his speech to urge a carveout to the filibuster to allow these bills to proceed and pass, and this new bill will be the legislative vehicle that Senate Democrats use to push that rule change.
As we prepare for this intense week of action in the Senate, we’ve seen much newspaper ink and talking head commentary these past few days dedicated to the intractability of certain Democratic senators who are clinging to a misguided view of Senate rules. Many of the headlines have been bleak.
I’m telling you, right now, that this fight is not over.
It wasn’t long ago that the Biden administration was also opposed to changing or doing away with the filibuster in order to protect voting rights. But this past week, some of us who were in the front row for the president’s speech had just a few weeks earlier been getting arrested outside the White House in acts of civil disobedience aimed at getting the president to put the full power of the presidency behind this fight. Then we were invited to Atlanta to witness the president announce that he was meeting that very demand. We succeeded in that goal and we can succeed with the holdout Democratic senators as well.
Joe Manchin is famous for changing his position on numerous issues. He was staunchly opposed to the For the People Act, then joined with colleagues to co-author the Freedom to Vote Act – For the People 2.0, which keeps intact most of the original bill’s major provisions.
And it should not be lost on Senator Sinema that her state was the very last state in the nation to formally recognize today’s Martin Luther King Day holiday. In a way, it’s almost fitting that she perhaps will be the last senator to recognize – and act on – the urgency of removing the filibuster as an obstacle to protecting the vote and saving our democracy.
We’re not backing down. And with your support we’ve been keeping up the pressure through the weekend and will continue to do so throughout the week.
I hope that Dr. King, and, for that matter, Congressman Lewis, are proud of how we’ve carried on their tradition of nonviolent direct action in our fight to protect the vote and defend democracy. And just as they stood on the right side of history, I’m optimistic that enough senators – with continued pressure – will heed the president’s words and choose to stand on the right side of history as well. The survival of our democracy depends on it.
Thank you, so much, for everything you do and for continuing to work with us to bend that arc of history towards justice.
Sincerely,
Ben Jealous, President
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