Biden renews call to defend voting rights during ‘Bloody Sunday’ visit to Selma

March 5 (UPI) — President Joe Biden recalled the words of the late Georgia Representative John Lewis in a call to “redeem America’s soul” by defending the right to vote at the edge of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Sunday. .

Biden visit comes before the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a flashpoint in the civil rights battle to reaffirm black American voting rights in 1965. Fifty-eight years later, Biden said the right to vote “still comes under attack.”

“The conservative Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act for years,” he said. “After the 2020 election, a spate of states passed dozens of anti-voting laws, fueled by big lies and election deniers now elected to office.”

As Lewis stood in front of a crowd of 600 people about to cross the bridge, named after a prominent Ku Klux Klan member, on the march to the State Capitol in Montgomery, he said there was still a lot of work to be done. That was also Biden’s message on Sunday, but not just about voting rights. He said he also wants to pass broader gun laws, protect federal health care programs and continue to build the economy “from the bottom up and from the middle to the edge.”

Lewis, Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, and hundreds of other marchers were met violence from the Alabama State Army. Lewis and Williams were among the first to be beaten and bloodied.

Biden recalled seeing the clash on the news when he was a student in Delaware. He said he felt guilty for not marching.

“I can still imagine soldiers with clubs, batons and whips,” he said. “Selma is payback. The right to vote is the threshold of democracy. Everything is possible with him. Nothing is possible without this right.”

Vice President Kamala Harris agreed with Biden’s message, which spoke of the importance of protecting voting rights in the conditions statement she left on Sunday.

“We must redouble our efforts and renew our commitment to protecting freedom of the vote,” Harris said in a statement.

“President Joe Biden and I continue to call on Congress to pass federal legislation that protects voting rights, election integrity, and our democracy. If we are to truly honor the legacy of those who marched in Selma on Bloody Sunday, we must continue to fight. to secure and protect the freedom of the vote.”

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