Many rallies are planned this Saturday across the country to denounce the measures that have been increasing for several months aimed at limiting access to the ballot boxes for minorities.–
Thousands of people are expected this Saturday in Washington, Houston, Atlanta and in dozens of other American cities to defend the right to vote of minorities, threatened according to the organizers by laws adopted this year in several conservative states, as in July. in Arizona.
Since January, at least 18 states have passed 30 restrictive election laws and dozens more are under review, according to think tank Brennan Center for Justice. From the obligation to have an address to register on the electoral rolls to the ban on drive-in voting, the provisions vary from state to state. “Racist, anti-democratic laws”, denounce the organizers of the demonstrations of the day, who demand that the Congress react.
Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited discriminatory electoral measures. But states have continued, with often very technical measures, to limit access to the ballot boxes for minorities, especially Afro-Americans, who vote mainly Democrats. This process has recently accelerated in Republican states against the backdrop of unproven accusations of massive electoral fraud hammered out by Donald Trump since the November 2020 presidential election.
In memory of Martin Luther King
The date of these gatherings was not chosen at random: it was August 28, 1963 that in front of nearly 250,000 people, Martin Luther King had launched «I have a dream», in a speech that has become a reference in the struggle for civil rights. “We are going to make history” while carrying “The torch of justice that my father and so many others had carried” 58 years ago, wrote his son, Martin Luther King III, who will speak in Washington with many other speakers from midday.
Protesters have already gathered this Saturday morning [à l’heure locale] in the muggy heat of Washington. “I have the impression that we have gone backwards”says Rikkea Harris, a 25-year-old student who traveled to the federal capital from Colorado to participate in the protest with her father. It is necessary “That everyone contributes to attempting to overturn these restrictive electoral laws”, adds his father, Rickey Harris, 65.
The House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, adopted two electoral reform projects this year aimed in particular at limiting these restrictions, but these texts currently have no chance of overcoming a Republican blockade expected in the Senate.
Thousands of people gathered in Washington last year to commemorate the anniversary and to call for an end to police violence against African Americans, at a demonstration marked by the vivid memory of the death of George Floyd in May 2020.
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