Each year, since 1965, the marchers have come to Selma to remember, to pay respects and to talk about the future.
Never has the future seemed more troubled than the past. Until now.
The marchers who made their way across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to close out the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, ending a weekend of events that welcomed some of the nation’s most recognizable civil rights and political leaders, told gathered media that there was a noticeable cloud hanging over the ceremonies. A feeling of dread.
The Voting Rights Act—the landmark legislation that evolved from the suffering of those who led the Civil Rights Movement—is on the verge of being gutted. Or, I guess I should say, even more gutted.
The conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court has already ignorantly and harmfully carved out the center of the Act. That came in 2013, when the court had the nerve to tell us that racism in the South was a thing of the past, and Shelby v. Holder ended requirements for certain states and municipalities to seek approval from the Department of Justice in order to change significant voting laws.
The Republican-led southern states promptly showed the high court just how dead racism was by implementing a slew of various voting hurdles targeted at poor, minority and elderly voters.
Not coincidentally, the biggest racist this side of George Wallace was elected president in 2016. And we’ve been on a downward slide ever since.
Now, we are, somehow, in worse shape.
An even more conservative Supreme Court is holding a knife above what’s left of the vital organs within the VRA. Very soon, racial gerrymandering could be legal and normal. They won’t even have to pretend anymore.
The southern states, where racism supposedly died, will be left with almost no Black lawmakers, as Republican-led state legislatures craft maps that will squeeze out majority-minority districts and return the South to something that Alexander Stephens and Jefferson Davis dreamed of in the 1800s.
If you doubt their willingness to do this, or their shamelessness in carrying it out, consider that the SAVE Act is already through the U.S. House and is being pushed heavily by the White House in the Senate. That act would impose, for the first time since the VRA’s passage, legal poll taxes in order to cast a ballot.
Billed as ID requirements, the Act would actually restrict acceptable to ID to register to vote and to cast a ballot to only a handful of expensive, complicated-to-get documents—like a passport or an original birth certificate—that most poor folks don’t readily have access to and that will require them significant time and resources to obtain. That, kids, is a poll tax.
And it is not, in any way, that generic “ID to vote” that so many mouth-breathing imbeciles yell about whenever you argue that the SAVE Act is discriminatory, anti-American and downright evil. Saying that requiring a passport to vote is just “requiring ID” takes an amount of gall that is literally immeasurable.
That’s the America we find ourselves in some 61 years after Black folks were beaten and trampled at the foot of the Edmund Pettus. After we, as a country, made promises to move forward as one. After we, as a country, promised to stop racial discrimination and mistreatment—to stamp it out wherever possible and shame the perpetrators of it.
Now, we’re quite proudly electing them and somehow spreading the fallacy that white people were wronged by that whole equality thing. In fact, the buffoon elected president currently said out loud during an interview that “white people have been treated very badly” since the passage of the VRA. He later shared a video of the nation’s first Black president depicted as an ape.
But all hope is not lost.
Yes, we are in some dark times and living among some of the weakest, snowflakiest white people, but there is a pathway to a better country. And it starts with voting before it’s too late.
Because a whole bunch of people simply are not.
In 2024, just 65 percent of eligible voters in America cast a ballot. In Alabama, less than 60 percent voted. In the 2022 midterm elections, just over a third of Alabama voters—around 34 percent—cast ballots.
Seriously consider those numbers. Think about what they mean to, say, the standard Alabama legislative seat. Or to a city council race. Or a mayor’s race. Or even a statewide office.
Every single election is technically up for grabs.
If we could simply get voters to the polls. If we could simply convince them that their lives would improve through participation. If we could show them how truly important voting is to their lives, their communities, to the people they care about.
That’s what the No Kings protests should be about—a modern day, Civil Rights Movement-level voter drive. Voter education. Voter registration. Voter mobilization.
I love the enthusiasm and turnout at the No Kings events, and the organizers have done a fantastic job getting people motivated and moving. But the one thing that the protests have lacked is one clear, concise goal. One focus that can drive it. One focus that can truly save the most vulnerable people.
Voting is that cause.
Because it is the one thing that can save us.
