The usual call for a day of service on the holiday named for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became a secondary plea this year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as speaker after speaker emphasized the urgency of passing two voting rights laws pending in Washington D.C.
“We are going to pass the John Lewis Voting Bill,” Cong. Hakeem Jeffries vowed.
In addressing a live and virtual audience he committed to winning the stand-off by Republicans to kill legislation proposed by Democrats.
Two bills combine to secure the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act. Without endorsement from two resistant Republicans, there is no hope of passage in the Senate.
Cong. Hakeem Jeffries described the impediments as “turbulence” similar to those Dr. King encountered in his quest to win voting rights in the south in the 1960s.
He harkened to the era when racist Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Bull Connor practiced Jim Crow discrimination.
