Watching Lyndon Johnson making a speech for passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Johnson’s statement in the course of the speech “We Shall Overcome” still moves me. The Supreme Court of a truly democratic nation would not even hear this case. My friend Rev. James Orange helped organize the Selma to Montgomery march. Every year he took me to the historical re-enactment. The amount of blood that the passage of the Voting Rights Act required is a stain on our nation. Its repeal by an un-elected rightwing Supreme Court would be a dishonor to our nation and a dishonor to all the sacrifice of all those who struggled for its passage
After all the radical rightwing efforts to frustrate voters of color and others JUST this year and that asshole Scalia said there is “racial entitlement” in the act is nauseating. Our nation’s democracy is threatened continually by radical rightwing Republicans who don’t want a real democracy. Hell, go ahead, buy elections, change voting rules over and over, make people intimidated to vote, destroy by government fiat, steal elections!!! Go ahead, it ain’t like this democracy was built on sacrifice.
The radical rightwing Republicans are making a mockery of our martyrs, and slowly but surely dismantling American Democracy.
Brothers and sisters, we will have to sacrifice to protect this democracy.
© Creative Commons Copyright 2013
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Stewart Acuff is the former organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Acuff has also written two books: Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing, and Getting America Back to Work.
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