“We’re working to restore the very voting rights protections my father and countless other civil rights leaders bled to secure.'
Decades later, to mark this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday observances, King’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, his wife Arndrea Waters King, and granddaughterare marching too. They intend to cross literal and symbolic bridges alongside national and grassroots groups, and individual supporters.
Last year alone, state legislatures across the country introduced some 440 voter suppression bills in 49 states. At least 19 states, including Georgia and Texas, have enacted voter ID requirements and other laws that critics say restrict access to the ballot, while supporters have described them as voter integrity measures.
About 150 multiracial civil rights, labor, clergy and other groups are helping to organize, amplify and support the King commemorative voting rights actions. For more than a year, Congress has considered federal voting rights legislation. While Democrats in the House have passed measures mostly along partisan lines, to date, Senate action has stalled. Democrats accuse GOP senators of using the filibuster to block debate on three separate voting rights bills. They include the For the People Act in June 2021; the Freedom to Vote Act in October 2021; and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in November 2021.
“We will return on Tuesday to take up the House-passed message containing voting rights legislation,” he said to his Senate colleagues. “Make no mistake, the United States Senate will — for the first time this Congress — debate voting rights legislation beginning on Tuesday.” Asked by reporters if he was confident about getting a voting rights bill passed, Biden said, “I hope we can get this done. The honest to God answer is, I don’t know whether we can get this done.”
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