Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2022 Is Taking on a Different Tone - And For Reasons Vital to Democracy

On this Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, the family of Dr. King is asking for a different kind of observance, which is to say, they demand that their father's legacy is best honored by restoring voting rights.

Please share this quote from my father through #MLKDay2022:

“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.” @LeaderMcConnell @SenatorSinema pic.twitter.com/uLmHyEqTTU

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 14, 2022

Martin Luther King Jr.’s family is calling for no celebration of #MLKDay without action on voting rights legislation.

When you see Republicans, Sinema, and Manchin celebrating MLK Day on Monday, just remember that they are BETRAYING his legacy. pic.twitter.com/ZE3gzi0i89

— Brave New Films (@bravenewfilms) January 14, 2022

It may be news to some that voting rights in America has been under attack - again. But to those who have been paying attention to what has been happening to the American electoral process since the conservative-dominated United States Supreme Court intervened in the closely-contested 2000 presidential election and made George W. Bush the 43rd POTUS, despite his Democratic opponent, Sen. Al Gore, winning the majority vote, this is not revelatory. Key SCOTUS decisions have collectively undermined the core principle of our democracy - election by a majority vote in a free and fair elector process. In 2008 and 2012, the United States made history by electing and re-electing its first African-American POTUS, Barack Hussein Obama. This monumental success of democracy was achieved largely because of record African-American voter turnout in both of those elections. But in the conservative "white backlash" to this triumph of American democracy, the still conservative and activist SCOTUS went to work to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which, along with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was the crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King. The ruling of the court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) was based on the circular logic that the preclearance requirement of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was an obsolete "racial entitlement" [yes, the Court used this racist dog whistle] that had no place in a "post-racial" America.

Preclearance protects voters.
The heart of the VRAA restores the requirement for jurisdictions with a long history of voting discrimination to “pre-clear” future changes to their voting rules.https://t.co/USrL4DvdHe

— RopeaDope (@rope_adope_) January 16, 2022

With the SCOTUS ruling that rescinded the protections of section 5, state legislatures in Texas, North Carolina and other red states immediately introduced and passed the most restrictive package of laws aimed at suppressing minority voting rights. And that effort to suppress votes has only intensified since that time. Congress must pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act and the John Lewis Freedom to Vote Act to restore the full protection of voting rights of all Americans, because in a democracy, every vote counts.