.@ChrisCoons holds copy of Voting Rights Amendment Act, which restores protections SCOTUS struck down #Selma50 pic.twitter.com/ExecxdlRmH
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) March 8, 2015
From the Washington Post, “‘The march is not yet over,’ Obama tells crowd at foot of Selma bridge“:
… Obama was introduced by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), whose skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers on the bridge, and joined by Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the daughter of George C. Wallace, the Alabama governor who ordered the attacks on the demonstrators. The president described the courage of protestors to press for change and endure savage beatings as a love of country and kind of patriotism that was quintessentially American.
“What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people — the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many — coming together to shape their country’s course?” Obama said. “What greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?”
About 40,000 spectators filled a five-block area hemmed in by dilapidated buildings to hear the speech. Although the crowd was predominantly African American, it included every shade of American…
But the nation’s first African American president also called for criminal-justice reform and made a point of reminding white Americans that “this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not yet over, we know the race is not yet won, we know that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character — requires admitting as much, facing up to the truth.”
Obama dedicated a substantial portion of his address to the recent battles over efforts to tighten voter registration rules and scale back some aspects of the Voting Rights Act, which a chastened and outraged President Lyndon B. Johnson submitted to Congress only a week after the Bloody Sunday attacks. “Right now, in 2015, 50 years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote,” Obama said. “The Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor. How can that be?”…
It can be, as quoted in McClatchyDC:
… Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., an honorary co-chairman of the Selma trip and the only African-American Republican in the Senate, said voting rights and the commemoration of Selma should be “de-coupled.”
“The issue of voting rights legislation and the issue of Selma, we ought to have an experience that brings people together and not make it into a political conversation,” Scott said.
But Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a co-sponsor of a bill last year to repair the Voting Rights Act, said he intends to honor the past and conduct business as he’s walking across Selma’s famous bridge this weekend…
Members of the Academy tuning in to Obama's speech won't say if it's good until they ensure it is historically accurate.
— Philip Bump (@pbump) March 7, 2015
Big ole hound
I hope the Congress approves this and then rolls up a copy and shoves it down the throats of a certain five assholes who sit on the supreme court and then switches the entry point.
Baud
The other thing that Obama mentioned — which also shouldn’t be decoupled — is the failure of people to exercise their right to vote.
Violet
As demographics change the “preclearance” section should apply to all states, all jurisdictions, not just those with a history of discrimination. No exceptions.
WereBear
Yeah! What did Selma have do to with voting rights?!?!?
/witheringsarcasm
rikyrah
Tim Scott is a shucking and jiving slave catcher on the order of Clarence Thomas.
rikyrah
@Violet:
ICAM
Tommy
My mom runs elections in her district. She isn’t the most liberal person you will find. She calls me after every election in tears. She asks “why don’t more people vote?” It is something we talk about all the time. Just vote.
If my mother found I didn’t vote, even if against her, she’d beat my ass down. Vote. Let me say that again, vote.
Cervantes
@rikyrah:
He’s almost pitiable in his predicament — but not quite.
chopper
how the fuck do you separate those two? does this guy even know what selma was about?
Josie
I find it hard to believe that he does not realize how asinine this statement is. Someone must have something on him or is paying him the big bucks. No one could be this stupid.
Hildebrand
I find ways to work in the need to vote into most of the American history lectures I give. I am certain my students are tired of hearing it, but with the abysmal voting percentage down here it is imperative that someone regularly tell them that they are only hurting themselves by not voting.
Mike J
Selma Pays Tribute To Lyndon Johnson For Voting Rights Act
Corner Stone
@Tommy:
In your talks on this have you ever suggested she donate some of the money she can’t spend in the rest of her lifetime to the ACLU or other non-profit orgs that provide free transportation to register to vote and/or rides to the polls during the election season?
WereBear
Damn, you know, I used to think so.
PsiFighter37
Anyone who thinks Orange Julius and Senator Turtle will pass a bill that decreases their chances of staying in power is drinking something stronger than Orange Julius.
Cynical but true.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
Your mother and I see eye to eye on this. In the 51 years I’ve been of age to vote, I honestly don’t believe I’ve missed a single primary, primary runoff, general election, general runoff, special election, civic and municipal election, etc. A couple of times, when I was subject to spur-of-the-minute traveling for work, I’ve voted absentee, but I much prefer the ritual of going to the polling place, signing in, and pulling the lever/marking the box/punching the chad, or whatever it happens to be. I like it so much, in fact, that I would love to see Election Day made a federal holiday. And I’ve changed my mind on mandatory voting, thanks to several people around here. I used to be opposed to it, but now I think it’s a pretty good idea. Would like to see some sweeping election reforms.
Hildebrand
@Corner Stone: The various voting advocacy groups have done marvelous work on our campus – we now have early voting (for 10 days prior to the election) in the Student Union – and not in some out of the way corner, they have it right at the front entrance. Now, we just need to get the students to stop and vote.
Belafon
@chopper:
The right to walk across bridges. In the same way that Moby Dick was about fishing.
//
I’ll be saying this as a white man, but he’s worried about one person.
JPL
@rikyrah: Selma was about the right to vote and Scott doesn’t appear to understand the history behind the march. . I don’t know what motivates him though.
Cervantes
@Josie:
Perhaps, but it depends on what audience he intends for that statement.
Jacks mom
How do you “de-couple” voting rights & Selma?
Oh right….legislation. Again
Tommy
@Corner Stone: No I have not and no she doesn’t. Her cause is rape and women issues. That is where her effort is at. As a kid I can tell you I recall my mother doing these things like yesterday. I was 12 or so and recall her doing this. Fighting for women with a white hot passion. Why I think now I try in my small way to fight for women.
Hal
Brings people together? Does Tim Scott know what happened on that bridge? This kind of horse shit is why I have zero respect for black republicans. Collect those checks Tim.
WaterGirl
@Jacks mom: I tried to reply in the other thread but it wouldn’t let me. Jade is a doll! Congratulations.
Suzanne
I get so unbelievably frustrated listening to the asinine “opinions” of some of my peers, the ones who don’t watch or read news, or know who their Senators or Congresscritters are, the ones who don’t know where their polling places are…..who then talk to me about my views as if I am as stupid and uneducated as they are, who act like they are Constitutional scholars because they read part of it once.
I don’t know what’s worse: that they don’t vote, or that they do.
pluege
@Hildebrand: clearly any Black person or woman that calls themselves republican is either an imbecile or as craven as a person can be.
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne:
I might have missed one election, but don’t really think so.
Vote, vote, vote. I live in a town of 8,700 adults. Around 570 vote. Ponder that for a few seconds.
Jacks mom
@Tommy: Your mother sounds very smart & engaged. Surely she can put both of those issues together. Voting rights and women’s rights.
chromeagnomen
@SiubhanDuinne:
if there were mandatory voting, the right would be swept out of office.
Mike in NC
Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) is 100% a Tea Party creation. They pay him to say the things they want to hear. For the right paycheck, he’d sit down and eat a full watermelon and spit out the seeds to the applause of a gang of redneck racists.
Jacks mom
@WaterGirl: oh wow….thanks. He is a doll and the love of my life right now.
Violet
@Jacks mom: I posted the proper link to the picture of your puppy in the other thread. So cute.
Keith G
Lots ‘o talk.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Tim Scott is WORSE than any slavecatcher. He’s a slavecatcher who VOLUNTEERED. He’s pinned his hopes on the good fortunes of the oppressors, and he will bear the consequences when all is said and done.
Jacks mom
@Violet: Thank you. I figured someone fixed it because I am useless tech-Wise. I appreciate it. If you don’t mind I’d really like to know how to post pictures of my dog, cats or garden to a comment on a blog from an apple machine…
jeffreyw
@Jacks mom: You were on the right track before but you got tangled up with an extra http:// in pasting the URL to the comment box here. When you click the link button you should see “http://” already entered and outlined in blue. When you right click and paste the URL you copied from your Flickr page that should be replaced by the one you are pasting but sometimes it will stay and not be overwritten. Alas, I run Windows and I know the keyboard on an apple machine is a bit different.
WaterGirl
@Jacks mom: I use imgur at imgur.com – you don’t even need to sign in. You can upload a photo and then copy the URL when it displays your photo. To keep it super simple, you can just paste the URL into the BJ thread directly if you want, without even using the “link” feature.
FlipYrWhig
Scott is just doing that annoying “Now is not the time to politicize things” routine that the NRA does after mass shootings. It’s never the right time to turn an emotional moment into civil action. Whoops, I forgot, there is one time: when there is terrorism, it’s time to crack down on all Arabs, Muslims, Persians, and Mexicans, because they’re all in league with one another.
David Koch
That’s some “libertarian”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
By the same token, I got into a debate with my boss today (didn’t see it coming, so I couldn’t avoid it) when he turned a discussion of breaking into the writing business into one in which he asserted that George Orwell was really a right winger even though he thought of himself as a socialist. My boss thinks that Animal Farm and 1984 completely discredit all left wing politics and do nothing but bolster capitalism.
Baud
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
What these people really think.
FlipYrWhig
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I don’t remember _1984_ seeming to depict a left-wing society. It was authoritarian. Your boss sounds like one of those people who thinks that Nazis are on the left because their full name is “national socialists.”
Jacks mom
@WaterGirl: Thank you. It is so much easier to participate if you can give a visual….especially pets, vegetables and herb.
SiubhanDuinne
@chromeagnomen:
So goodbye to that idea.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@FlipYrWhig: I tried explaining things like trying to keep Orwell’s intended audience (which, especially with Animal Farm, was most certainly not right wingers) in mind when trying to figure out what he was saying, but that flew right past him. Not only is he, I’m sure, someone who thinks the Nazis were a left wing manifestation, but he’s also the sort who cannot see any distinction between the various strains of left wing thought, as mind-boggling as that position is to anyone who actually is on the left (or pays attention to reality), so it isn’t possible for Orwell to discredit a very specific strain of left wing thought without also discrediting all of the rest of left wing ideology.
Citizen_X
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Orwell fought in the militia of the Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista) in the Spanish Civil War, but don’t let that stop the right from claiming him.
Jeffro
Side note: major props to Chris Coons, an outstanding Senator (not just on this issue) and all-around great human being. Glad to see he is pushing this…where are his fellow Dems? Let’s get Coons and Colin Powell together sometime soon to co-promote the idea of a) following all these new restrictive voter ID laws and then b) ramping up in turnout so that those same laws can be overturned.
Roger Moore
@Citizen_X:
There were a fair number of people who sided with the Marxists in the 1930s because they were worried about fascism but who repudiated it after WWII. That was a big thing during the Communist witch hunts. So it’s not completely implausible that somebody who fought with the Marxists in the Spanish Civil War might have swung to the right later.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Violet:
This. I think it’s been adequately demonstrated by now that the problem of voter suppression is not limited to certain areas of the country. It’s a problem anywhere Republicans decide to change the rules to benefit themselves. Everyone should have to to pre-clear, no exceptions.
phoebes-in-santa fe
The mention of Peggy Wallace Kennedy at Obama’s side made me remember the marvelous piece she wrote about why she was voting for Obama in 2008. And why she thought her father…if he were still alive, might just possible agree.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/03/wallace.kennedy.obama/index.html?iref=allsearch
Yatsuno
@Roger Moore: As I recall Orwell was a committed socialist until the day he died. I read an article about this but of course I can’t find it now.
Roger Moore
@Yatsuno:
Sure. I wasn’t trying to say that Orwell turned into a right winger after WWII, just that talking about what people did in the 1930s isn’t necessarily a reliable guide to their attitude toward communism in the 1950s. The thing about Orwell is that we know enough about his politics that we don’t have to argue based on assumptions; we have a lot of evidence about his political beliefs.
Tree With Water
Kudos to Coons. Jab, jab, jab.. I dig democrats that pick fights with republicans.
Chris
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
They tend towards a binary worldview. They’re Team Us, and there’s Team Everyone Else, and all the different varieties of Team Everyone Else tend to just kind of blend together.
Cervantes
@Yatsuno:
Yes, he was.
Right-wingers who seem confused about that include those who don’t — or pretend not to — understand that many socialists opposed Stalinism, and still oppose totalitarianism in general.
Nickws
“Members of the academy tuning in to Obama’s speech derp derp”–Some Twitter Culture Warrior Who’d Likely Never Stoop To Commenting On A Blog With Icky Longwinded People
{ok, sort of pointless in light of Sen Scott’s actually, politically relevant travesty of the history under discussion here}Jeebus, social media, get real.
In reality, the reason that movie was snubbed by Oscar was either, (a.) because Oprah’s production company just didn’t promote it early or hard enough to the fickle, bandwagon-jumping, freebie-grubbing members of the AMPAS; or more insidiously & grossly, (b.) the academy selectors simply decided that Twelve Years A Slave used up ‘too many’ ‘apportioned’ Oscar noms and wins last year, so too bad other films this year.
The tumblr/twitter clicktivist crowd are naive if they expect people to believe their groupthink about Selma being successfully sabotaged by frickin’ Joseph Califano’s hitpiece. Hollywood just doesn’t operate at that sort of middlebrow, egghead frequency. Step away from the tidy, footnoted, campus debate rationales, social media. This is showbiz.
Like I say above, the reason for Selma being snubbed is either vulgar transactional ent. industry commerce… or it’s about racism _so_ blatant it goes way, way beyond whether or not Selma’s screenplay conforms to Old Man Whitey’s liberal establishment factchecking.
(And yet twitter/tumblr mostly believes Ava DuVernay was snubbed for best director simply for being too gender&culturally diverse. In which I think they have a point. Funny how they aren’t saying she was martyred over a controversial script. That was only an issue for Selma in the other categories, perhaps?:=P){/ok}
ericblair
@Cervantes: If Mr. boss wants to see what Orwell’s politics were, he can read Road to Wigan Pier.and see if he can pull any cryptolibertarian needle out of that haystack.
Cervantes
@ericblair:
Yes — and fancy meeting you here!