Susan Walsh/AP Photo
The Rev. Liz Theoharis, center at microphone, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, speaks outside National City Christian Church in Washington, April 5, 2021.
Americans across the country are calling for Congress to pass a federal response to legislation that restricts the right to vote at the state level. Democratic lawmakers have responded with two bills that address voting rights, campaign finance, and other democratic processes: the For the People Act (H.R. 1 and S. 1) and the John Lewis Voting Advancement Act (H.R. 4).
But much like the last federal intervention to state voting laws, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, these bills are unlikely to be signed into law without action from beyond Capitol Hill.
“This is a time for strong social movements and social organization,” says the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “It has been those who are most impacted and movements for change that have been raising and sounding the alarm on the attack on voting rights.”
Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, years of organizing to combat Jim Crow laws and violence around elections forced the issue to be a priority for lawmakers. The Freedom Summer Project of 1964 in Mississippi saw mostly college-aged students spend the summer helping disenfranchised people register to vote. The following spring, demonstrators marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to advocate for the right to vote, following the death of Selma activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot by police while participating in a peaceful protest. At 25 years old, then-activist John Lewis helped organize the march from Selma and was consequently beaten by police on the now-historic Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Six decades later, the United States has rediscovered its abilities to organize and protest. Police brutality against the likes of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor inspired millions of people to make known their goals for reform and justice. As a direct result, police reform is now one of the top priorities of the Biden administration, and the Senate is holding bipartisan negotiations on legislation. While smartphones and technology play a bigger role in the movement-building of today, the work done to support and engage people most impacted by public policy remains the same.
Six decades later, the United States has rediscovered its abilities to organize and protest.
However, it’s unclear if people and organizations are prepared to mobilize again this year around issues of voting rights, after the exhaustion of last year’s racial reckoning and the pandemic, and every day getting farther from the memory of the 2020 general election.
“It became very clear, very obvious what police killings do to a community, to a family. The visual images are so raw,” says Carol Anderson, professor of African American studies at Emory University. “The impact of voter suppression is less visible. That is part of the beauty of bureaucratic violence; it’s a silent killer.”
Anderson and others have called the new state voting laws passed in Georgia and Florida “Jim Crow 2.0.” In his first speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) used a similar shorthand for bills that make it harder to vote other than in person on Election Day and add more requirements to the vote-by-mail process, by calling them “Jim Crow in new clothes.”
Organizers have learned how to operate and assist targeted voters during election seasons. In 2020, local and national organizations as well as campaigns took on the responsibility of educating voters about their options for voting during the pandemic, in addition to answering basic questions about logistics, on polling place hours, deadlines to mail back ballots, and how to get to an early-voting center.
However, this effort hasn’t led to organizing that can address conditions for future elections in advance, let alone force their priorities through the U.S. Senate’s gridlock. This leaves reasons for inaction, like the Senate filibuster, unchallenged.
The civil rights movement had a knack for directly highlighting unjust laws for the nation. Freedom Rides actually began in 1961, as desegregated buses of young civil rights activists rolled into the South to uphold two Supreme Court rulings that found segregated bus systems unconstitutional. Like the Selma march, these rides also provoked a violent response from local law enforcement.
It’s the 60th anniversary of these protests, and amid racial suppression of voting rights, a response of similar magnitude could be necessary to force action in Washington. That could take the form of direct actions in states where voting rights have been stripped.
The increased turnout in the 2020 election signals that more people may be willing to engage with voting rights than before.
We saw a version of Freedom Summer in Texas on Sunday night, when Democratic legislators staged a dramatic walkout to deny a quorum for a bill that restricted voting activities. After the vote, one Democratic lawmaker said, “Breaking quorum is about the equivalent of crawling on our knees begging the president and the United States Congress to give us the For the People Act and give us the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.”
Theoharis says that the increased turnout in the 2020 election signals that more people may be willing to engage with voting rights than before. And there have been state-level victories to expand access to the ballot in recent years, such as reforms to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people. But organizing or advancements from the federal government are not apparent, and the federal level would have the most impact, Theoharis says.
Further inaction from Congress, Anderson says, could lead to new voters from 2020 feeling like their votes didn’t matter. “It is very possible to render that voting population disaffected and disengaged, and what that means is you will not see massive protests fighting for the right to vote,” Anderson says.
So while there may be potential for another Freedom Summer, voters may now be looking to Washington instead to take the next step. Anderson explains, “What has to happen is there has to be movement in Washington on these issues that make it clear that those in Washington will fight, fight hard for American democracy, fight hard for their constituents, their voters, and that [they] can substantially improve the quality for life for folks who are willing to take the brunt of a pandemic to put those folks in office.”
