Vice President Kamala Harris told the crowd who came to Selma on Sunday to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday that the “fight for freedom is not over.”
Harris said “extremists” are waging a “full-on attack on our hard-fought and hard-won freedoms, starting with the sacred freedom to vote.” She said states have passed laws limiting drop boxes, they have closed polling places near minority neighborhoods and college campuses and attacked the “integrity of free and fair elections.”
She said she and President Joe Biden demand that the U.S. Congress pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to protect voting rights.
The Jubilee marks the anniversary of the day several hundred marchers attempted crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the beginning of a planned march to Montgomery to protest for voting rights. The marchers were attached and turned back by Alabama State Troopers, local law enforcement and white citizens.
Reaction to the day in 1965, known as Bloody Sunday, resulted in the passing of civil rights and voting legislation, changing the nation’s civil rights landscape and cementing Selma and its bridge in history.
In addition to voting rights, Harris said “extremists” have “attacked the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body,” leaving modern women with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers.
Citizens also have a right to be free of gun violence, but Congress has refused to allow what she called “reasonable gun safety laws.” The freedom for an American to “love who they love openly and with pride” and to learn about the nation’s history have been threatened by anti-LGBTQ laws, laws limiting subjects that can be covered in school and book bans.
Harris said for America’s young people, these assaults on freedoms are a “lived experience.” And she said they, like the Foot Soldiers who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge 59 years ago, “will not be deterred, they will not be defeated and they will not be denied” in protecting their freedom.
“What kind of country do we went to live in?” Harris asked. “A country of freedom, liberty and justice, or a country of injustice, hate and fear? Each of us has the power to answer that question with our feet and with our vote.”
Harris, echoing the slogan of late Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis, said, “History is a relay race. The generations before us have passed (the baton) to us. Let’s continue to organize and continue to fight. And let’s make some ‘good trouble’ along the way.”
Congresswoman Terri Sewell opened the presentations with a promise to push for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. “If your vote didn’t matter, extremists wouldn’t be working so hard to take it away,” Sewell said.
She also took the opportunity to thank the Biden Administration for helping Selma recover from the Jan. 12, 2023 tornado.
Harris opened her address with a five-minute discussion of what she called the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.
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