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It was hot and humid in DC on Saturday, and I was thoroughly drenched with sweat by the time the March On For Voting Rights arrived in front of the US Capitol. Soon after, the three-hour rally began, with almost all of the thousands there listening from the shelter of the tree shaded grass on either side of the National Mall.
For me, the high point of the program was the consecutive speeches toward the end by 13 year old Yolanda Renee King, Andrea Waters King and Martin Luther King III, respectively a granddaughter, daughter-in-law and son of Martin Luther King, Jr. All were good, substantive, and the fact that they are a family living and working very much in Dr. King’s spirit was personally moving. My life as an activist and organizer literally began on the day he was killed in 1968, so to see and hear his family descendants speaking out so clear and strong was no small thing.
Somewhere in the course of this long, hot day, leaving Newark, NJ on the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) bus at 4 am and getting back about 9 pm, my thinking and feelings about the importance of voting rights shifted. In a way I didn’t before the DC rally, I now feel much more strongly the urgency of the effort to get the US Senate to pass voting rights legislation now.
I’m afraid that too many of us who haven’t directly experienced voter suppression — white people — look upon the right to vote too intellectually, and not from the heart. Of course we support it, we’re democrats. Of course we support it, democracy requires it. If we didn’t…
