This year we gather on this day, not to celebrate the life of this great man of peace, but to mourn the shredding of his legacy. In just one year, 19 states have limited the rights of their citizens to vote. And, while they claim to have done this in the name of election security, it is very clear that the goal was to disenfranchise very specific groups of people who are less likely to vote for them and their political party.

21 million citizens in the US do not have government issued IDs--and cannot get one for a variety of reasons. In states that require that ID, they cannot vote (ACLU, 2021.) Millions more will be denied the right to vote because they work, because they do not drive, or because they live on the wrong side of town.

This change in voting laws was done in the full light of day with those who passed them barely suppressing their glee at the idea that they could affect the outcome of future elections by denying people their rights at the ballot box. When Congress tried to pass laws that would roll back these changes, 52 Senators stood in the way and used the Jim Crow filibuster to prevent a vote. As I write this, these voter suppression laws will stand, and SO MANY votes will not be cast.

The future of our nation hangs in the balance.

It is with this in mind that I say that today should not be a celebration, today should be a day of mourning, and a day of organization. If you gather today, do so with one goal in mind: "What can I do to reinstate the rights of those who have had them stripped? What can I do in MY community to make sure that everyone who wants to vote, CAN vote." THIS should be the focus today and every day until voting rights have been reestablished.

Shed a tear, then stand up, organize, and fight.

In Solidarity,

Sean Frame, Founder

The Six PAC

"Give us the ballot (Yes), and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South (All right) and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.

Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs (Yeah) into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.

Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill (All right now) and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a “Southern Manifesto” because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice. (Tell ’em about it)

Give us the ballot (Yeah), and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy (Yeah), and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.

Give us the ballot (Yes), and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May seventeenth, 1954. (That’s right)

In this juncture of our nation’s history, there is an urgent need for dedicated and courageous leadership. If we are to solve the problems ahead and make racial justice a reality, this leadership must be fourfold."

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

May 17, 1957