‘My vote is my voice’: protesters fight for democracy as Trump casts shadow | US voting rights
WWanda Mosley had arrived from Atlanta wearing a T-shirt that read “We Won’t Decide” over her ears. “I had to be here because the Voting Rights Act was on life support,” the 55-year-old actor said. “Today the court will synthesize the allegations and decide whether to kill him or let him live..”
Mosley was among several hundred protesters who gathered outside the high court in the hot October sun on Wednesday. Inside the building, whose facade was darkened by scaffolding, the justices were considering arguments in a case involving Louisiana voting districts and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
From a distance, it might seem like a dry discussion of a secret law Congress passed half a century ago. But those gathered on the courthouse steps, many of them black, carried a palpable awareness that the legacies of civil rights giants like Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King and John Lewis were at stake.
Speakers noted: Voting Rights Act It was a landmark law aimed at preventing racial discrimination in voting. Undermining this would reverse decades of progress.
People held signs aloft that read “Black voters matter,” “Build Black political power,” “Fight for fair maps,” “Fight like hell!”, “This is about us,” “My vote is my voice,” “Protect the people, not the power.” “Save our vote,” one said around a photo of Lewis, the Georgia congressman who died five years ago.
Donald Trump cast a shadow. An African-American man waved a black-and-white flag that read: “To hell with Trump and to hell with you for voting for him.” A white woman carried a sign with a mocking caricature of the president and the slogan: “Trump is afraid of free and fair elections.”
Another carried a banner referencing Marshall, the first African American supreme court justice, and current justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative judge who is also African American. “Thurgood is watching you, Clarence,” he said. The back of the banner read: “Stop legalizing Trump’s race war.”
Slogans “Power to the people” and “We will not budge” were chanted. Songs like Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, Common and John Legend’s Glory, and Jill Scott’s Golden blared from the speakers.
Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, admitted to the crowd that he had mixed emotions: “There’s a part of me that feels sad about the impending death of this thing that meant so much. I feel that sadness. There’s a part of me that feels weak, feels small, standing outside this huge building that has so much history.”
But Albright also insisted on hope, citing Lewis’ role in the 1965 Selma marches to Montgomery, where he led peaceful protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “When we believed, we had the power to move mountains, we had the power to cross a bridge in a city called Selma, and we changed the course of history.
“We have the power to cause big trouble, and we have the power to move this field. This field is just another mountain for us to move. We have this kind of power, but we have to believe, folks.”
At that moment a loud cheer rose Janai NelsonArguing on behalf of a group of Black voters, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund walked out of the courthouse and down the steps that had witnessed many past victories. Two white women in police uniforms and sunglasses looked on.
Nelson told the meeting in an optimistic tone: “We believe in the future of this multiracial democracy. No matter what attacks and attacks we face now, we believe that the right to vote is still the lifeblood of our democracy and must be protected at all costs.”
“And we know the law is on our side. We know that if these justices listen to themselves, we will win this case, and so that’s the argument we’re making today.”.”
Speakers framed the legal battle as the latest chapter in a long, generation-long struggle for civil rights and often referenced the movement’s heroes.
Terri SewellA Democratic congressman representing Alabama’s seventh congressional district, which includes his hometown of Selma, said: “I want to remind all of you what John Lewis said the last time on that bridge in Selma.
“John’s body was riddled with cancer, but he stood up tall and strong at the top of the bridge and said in a very strong voice: ‘Never give up. Never give up. Keep the faith and let’s keep our eyes on the prize.’”
Alanah OdomsReferring to King’s “promissory note” analogy at the March on Washington, the executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana stated that “America has failed to deliver on that promise” and that, generations later, the question remains: “When will this country get paid for what it has put on paper?”
As the crowd dispersed, Mosley, an activist from Atlanta, lingered for a moment and considered why he had come. “It’s frustrating because I’m as American as anyone else,” he said. “I am a descendant of the enslaved Africans who literally built this country.
“I deserve to have unrestricted voting rights, and I deserve to have representation that lives in my neighborhood, comes from my community, and knows what our community needs. And we’re going to fight for those things.”
