Ensure People of Color Have Their Voices Heard at the Ballot Box

Target: Democratic Chair Chuck Schumer

Goal: Enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to guarantee voting rights for People of Color.

Bloody Sunday, Selma, Alabama, 1965: John Lewis led peaceful demonstrators across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a march for voting rights and was met with violent and armed state troopers. Protesters refused to fight back, as the troopers beat them with clubs, whips, and barbed wire. Lewis’s skull was fractured by a nightstick, but several months later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These protections stood firm until 2013, when the right-leaning Supreme Court eviscerated the Act. Since then, the GOP has passed a plethora of racist voter restriction laws.

The newly proposed John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act restores key elements removed by the Supreme Court ruling. If passed, the GOP’s favorite voter suppression tactics will have some measure of oversight again: restrictive voter I.D. laws, reducing multilingual voting materials, and most recently in Georgia, shutting down Sunday voting to block Black churches from organizing their congregations.

Georgia Representative John Lewis died last year after a lifetime of fighting for equal rights but work still needs to be done. Sign below and demand that the Senate pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Senator Schumer,

Our democracy continues to be eviscerated by the continual suppression of voting rights brought on by the GOP. This includes actions such as restrictive voter I.D. laws, reducing multilingual voting materials, and shutting down Sunday voting to stop Black churches from organizing their congregations. These are all tactics that directly contradict the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which guaranteed protections for POC who were all too often kept from the vote. This act was gutted by the Supreme Court which allowed the right to introduce a wave of racist voter suppression laws.

These acts need to be addressed and remedied. The Senate must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the original protections provided by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Activists like John Lewis worked diligently their entire lives for equal rights, and the American people owe it to him, people like him, and to themselves to make sure that fight was not in vain.

Please, Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Photo Credit: Michael Fleshman