Voting rights advocates observe somber King holiday

While most of the country will spend the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday remembering the peaceful nature and civil rights successes lodged by the late leader, voting rights advocates say this is a dark time for them.

Many might spend Monday reflecting on King's 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march to push for voting equality for black Americans, but voting rights advocates note that there has been a major setback in their world.

In 2013, a Supreme Court ruling struck down the part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that indicates which parts of the country must have changes to voting rights laws cleared by the federal government or by a federal court. Preclearance was a requirement for states and communities that had a history of discrimination against black voters. Advocates viewed it as a necessary safeguard against discrimination at the ballot.

Also, 33 states now have Voter ID laws in place with increased identification requirements for people seeking to cast ballots. The issue has been a controversial one for civil rights advocates, who maintain that some groups of Americans, including older people and minorities, are less likely to have the sort of identification that would be required.

This year will mark the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act intact, said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who plans to spend the King holiday volunteering in the Washington area.

Said Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “In his 1957 speech 'Give Us the Ballot,' Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of ‘all types of conniving methods … still being used …’ to prevent blacks from registering to vote as ‘a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition.’ “

What many view as the gutting of the Voting Rights Act has prompted civil rights advocates to take action. A coalition of 100 organizations including the NAACP will stage a string of protests and acts of civil disobedience to garner momentum to reverse those setbacks, particularly as the country looks toward the presidential election, said Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP.

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“We believe that announcing this on Martin Luther King’s birthday is a fitting form of commemoration and celebration,” Brooks said in a telephone interview. “It’s not enough for us to perform community service as though the state of democracy is intact.”

Brooks, who will speak about King’s legacy at a church in North Little Rock, Ark., on Monday and at Yale University on Wednesday, said the Democracy Initiative, which includes Greenpeace, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, will demonstrate between April 16 and April 18, with the intention of disrupting Congress, Brooks said.

“I anticipate arrests, in and outside the Capitol,” Brooks said. “Congress allowing the Voting Rights Act to be gutted has disrupted our democracy … so our democracy should get back to functioning as it should.”

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a nonprofit that aims to shine a spotlight on spending and politics, said frustrated advocacy organizations such as his are grateful to be able to expend their energies in such a protest.

“In recent years, we’ve seen a tragic roll back of many of the achievements,” Weissman said. “Rights that had appeared to be resolved as matters of controversy in American politics are unfortunately once again up for grabs. It’s hard to imagine what’s more American than insuring the right to vote for all Americans, and what could be more un-American than impeding it?”

The advocacy groups are pushing for four pieces of legislation, Weissman said.

One piece of legislation would restore the segments of the Voting Rights Act removed by the 2013 Supreme Court decision, and add updates to the act. Another piece of legislation would modernize voter registration. A third would call for a constitutional amendment to allow elected officials to set limits on spending in elections. A fourth would encourage small political contributions from Americans.

"We're excited about partnering with the NAACP and now more than 100 organizations in an effort this spring to focus on these and related issues to restore American democracy, and also tackle the problem of money and politics," Weissman said. "I think we're going to make some noise."

Said Brooks, "We are making it very clear that we're protecting the right to vote, insuring the integrity of the right to vote and getting out the vote. This is not all of us registering people to vote and waiting for November with polite patience."

He added, "We anticipate organizations really connecting activism with the ballot box."

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