If you’ve been feeling depressed about the Republicans’ rush to disenfranchise Black and minority voters, after a greenlight from the U.S. Supreme Court, you should be heartened by the National Day of Action for Voting Rights on Saturday.
The kickoff event was at the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama with a prayer service and remembrance for those who marched there in 1965. Later, there was a national rally in Montgomery.
It’s the launch of a sustained effort. Wisdom Cole, the Senior National Director of Advocacy for the NAACP, told The Root, “Black folks from across the country are gonna be busing in, flying in, to show up and to really begin organizing to turn out in the November election. … This is a moment in time where we have to be able to show up and show the power that is within the people who are most impacted.”
It’s not just Alabamans who have heeded the call. “A consortium of more than 228 groups came together from across the country to oppose the actions in Alabama and other states to change voting lines and reduce heavily Black districts,” AL.com reported. By afternoon, the protest was “dominating downtown Montgomery in open resistance to efforts by state lawmakers to change the district maps.”
It was clearly a multicultural group, too.
