Protests across the United States to defend the minority vote
Thousands of people demonstrated in Washington, Houston, Atlanta and dozens of other American cities on Saturday to defend the right to vote for minorities. According to the organizers, this is threatened by laws passed in several conservative states.
Protesters in Miami.
KEYSTONE/EPA
The date of these gatherings was not chosen at random: it was August 28, 1963 that Martin Luther King launched “I have a dream” in front of nearly 250,000 people. His speech has become a benchmark in the struggle for civil rights.
Promising to carry with the demonstrators “the torch of justice that my father and so many others carried” 58 years ago, Martin Luther King III called on the crowd on Saturday to “not give up” the fight for equality facing the ballot box.
“Voting is sacred”
“The dream, it is you who carry and the time has come to make it come true,” he told the demonstrators, fewer in number than in 1963. About 20,000 people gathered in Washington, according to the organizers. . The police did not provide a figure.
“Voting rights for all”, “the vote is sacred”: waving placards, the demonstrators marched from around the White House to the feet of the Capitol, seat of the US Congress.
“I feel like we’ve gone backwards,” says Rikkea Harris, a 25-year-old student who made the trip from Colorado. It is necessary “that everyone contributes to try to cancel these restrictive electoral laws”, adds his father, Rickey Harris, 65 years.
Acceleration
Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited discriminatory electoral measures. But some states have continued, with often very technical measures, to limit access to the ballot boxes for minorities, particularly 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.
–Protesters denounce a step backwards (archives).
KEYSTONE
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 voting on sites accessible without leaving your car, the provisions vary from state to state.
“Racist laws”
“Racist, anti-democratic laws,” denounced the organizers of Saturday’s protests, who demand that Congress react.
The Democratic-majority House of Representatives 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.
“A year later, I’m disappointed,” says Rickey Harris, because “it looks like we are moving in the wrong direction.
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