President Joe Biden assailed voter suppression and called for economic justice for Black Americans during his remarks on Sunday, the day commemorating the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama.
Standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where voting rights demonstrators were brutally beaten in 1965 by state troopers while protesting for equal access to the ballot, President Biden doubled down on his calls for Congress to pass two key federal voting rights bills that remain dormant on Capitol Hill – the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.
“The right to vote [and] to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty,” said President Biden. “With it, anything’s possible. Without that right, nothing is possible.”
He added, “This fundamental right remains under assault.”
Five months after activists, led by leaders like the late civil rights icon U.S. Rep. John Lewis, marched from Selma to Montgomery, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which prohibited racial discrimination in voting. However, 58 years later, the landmark law remains weakened after rulings from the Supreme Court in recent years.
President Biden called out the “conservative” court that “gutted” the Voting Rights Act and lamented the “wave of states and dozens of anti-voting laws fueled by the big lie and the election deniers” after the 2020 election.
Acknowledging the political reality of a divided Congress where Republicans have repeatedly blocked passage of voting rights reform, Biden declared, “We must get the votes in Congress.”
He added, “I will not let a filibuster obstruct the sacred right to vote.”
Biden also connected the issue of voting rights to other issues impacting Black communities across the country, like access to affordable housing and the economy. He argued that his agenda was creating a thriving and…
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