In honor of longtime MP, President Joe Biden once again urges Congress to pass legislation that defends the right to vote.
U.S. President Joe Biden has renewed his call for Congress to pass legislation to protect the right to vote in honor of longtime civil rights and parliamentary rights leader John Lewis, who died a year ago.
In a statement Saturday, a year after Lewis’ death, Biden said it was crucial to continue “the cause for which John was willing to give his life: to protect the sacred right to vote.”
“Not since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s have we seen more relentless attacks on voting rights and the integrity of our elections,” said Biden, who pointed to the false claims of his predecessor Donald Trump. that the 2020 elections were clouded by their generalization. example.
He also criticized “new waves of voter suppression,” a reference to a number of state legislations that it seeks to restrict access to voting and that critics say it would disproportionately harm blacks and other black voters.
Controversial laws are being debated in states like Texas and implemented by Republican lawmakers in other states, including Arizona, Florida and Georgia.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which tracks U.S. voter suppression laws, he says on its website, that 17 states had enacted 28 new laws restricting access to voting as of June 21st.
“We are again asking Congress to pass the People’s Act and John Lewis’s Advancement of Voting Rights Act so that you can subscribe to the law,” Biden said in his statement, referring to the proposed legislation that would strengthen voting rights but has stalled in Congress.
Democrats are pushing for the People’s Bill, a federal voting and election bill, but Senate Republicans have joined together to block it, saying it violates states ’ability to hold elections. Most Republicans have also rejected John Lewis ’Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would reinstate sections of the voting rights law that were weakened by the Supreme Court.
Lewis, who served in Congress for decades, was a protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. and continued to fight for civil and human rights until the end of his life.
Perhaps he was best known for leading some 600 protesters to the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. State soldiers defeated Lewis and other activists who were marching for voting rights that day.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris described Lewis as “an American hero.”
“Congressman Lewis fought tirelessly for our country’s highest ideals: freedom and justice for all and for the right of all Americans to make their voices heard at the polls,” Harris said Saturday in his own statement.
As a college student at American Baptist College and later at Fisk University, Lewis also helped desegregate Nashville’s public spaces and promoted racial justice throughout the South.
Nashville marked the anniversary of his death with events Friday and Saturday, changing the name of much of Fifth Avenue to Rep. John Lewis Way.
Among the establishments along the street is the downtown Woolworth building, where Lewis and other black civil rights leaders sat defiantly at the segregated food counter that would not serve them in 1960. Hundreds marched down the street before arrive at the Ryman Auditorium for a celebration ceremony.
Meanwhile, senior U.S. lawmakers and members of Lewis’s family gathered Saturday in San Diego to christen a Navy ship named Lewis.
“This ship will be a beacon for the world that will remind everyone who sees it of the persistence and courage of John Lewis,” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told USNS christening John Lewis.
Lewis ’nephew, Marcus Tyner, said the family appreciated the honor, but said“ what my uncle would like best ”is if Congress passes the voting rights law that bears his name.
