Worker Power Update

Republicans Say No to Voters and to Democracy

Yesterday Senate Republicans blocked critical voting rights bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, with the help of filibuster rules.

The Freedom to Vote Act would give all voters access to early voting, make election day a national holiday, ban partisan gerrymandering, prohibit voter intimidation, and make many more common sense changes.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act restores important parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Every previous renewal of the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by a Republican president.

A minority of the members of the Senate, who represent an even smaller minority of the American population, should not be able to stand between voters and the ballot box. The legacy of Jim Crow and the white supremacist campaign to disenfranchise Black Americans remains with us in the form of the filibuster.

As Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said at the conclusion of his stirring speech near the end of over 10 hours of debate on the legislation, the fight is not over. “History is watching us. Our children are counting on us. And I hope that we will have the courage to do what is right for our communities and for our country—the courage to cross this bridge, to do the hard work in this defining moral moment in America for the sake of the communities that sent us here in the first place, for the sake of the planet, for the sake of health care, for the sake of jobs, for the sake of being able to argue for the things that we care about. The courage to fight for one another. I’m still praying that we will cross that bridge. But if not tonight, we will come back again and again and again.”