‘Selma Is A Reckoning’: Biden Pushes Voting Rights at Civil Rights Observance
President also touts police reform, as well
President Biden spoke out once more for the need for federal voting rights legislation Sunday when he joined the annual Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing in Selma, Ala.
Biden used the solemn occasion — which every year marks the historical event where, on March 7, 1965, civil rights activists were beaten by police at the location while marching to Montgomery to protest the denial of voting rights to Black Americans, a day that has become known as “Bloody Sunday” — to return to the matter of voting rights.
It was not Biden's first time at the Selma commemoration. As he pointed out, he's been there as a presidential candidate, vice president and even during his time as a US senator from Delaware.
“The right to vote — the right to vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty,” the president said Sunday, when he would also link arms with the Rev Al Sharpton and others and cross the bridge. “With it, anything is possible. Without that right, nothing is possible.
“And this fundamental right remains under assault. The conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act over the years. Since the 2020 election, a wave of states and dozens — dozens — of anti-voting laws fueled by the Big Lie, and the election deniers now elected to office,” he added. “The new law here in Alabama, among other things, enacted a new congressional map that discriminated against Black voters by failing to include what should’ve been a new predominately Black district.”
Biden noted that he recently signed the Electoral Count Reform Act to prevent another attempted block of the peaceful transfer of power, such as that seen on January 6, 2021.
“But we know that we must get the votes in Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act,” Biden said.
And, in another key matter, Biden said that while congressional Republicans block passage of the George Floyd Police Reform Act, he signed an executive order requiring all the key elements of the bill applied to federal law enforcement he couldn’t make at the states: banning chokeholds, greatly restricting no-knock warrants, establishing a database for police misconduct, advancing effective and accountable community policing that builds public trust.
“And we’ll keep fighting to pass the reform nationwide,” the president said.
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