President Joe Biden used the searing memories of Selma’s Bloody Sunday to recommit to a cornerstone of democracy, lionising a seminal moment from the civil rights movement at a time when he has been unable to push enhanced voting protections through Congress and a conservative Supreme Court has undermined a landmark voting law.
President Joe Biden used the searing memories of Selma’s Bloody Sunday to recommit to a cornerstone of democracy, lionising a seminal moment from the civil rights movement at a time when he has been unable to push enhanced voting protections through Congress and a conservative Supreme Court has undermined a landmark voting law.
“Selma is a reckoning.
“The right to vote … to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it anything’s possible,” Mr Biden told a crowd of several thousand people seated on one side of the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after a reputed Ku Klux Klan leader.
“This fundamental right remains under assault.
“The conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act over the years.
“Since the 2020 election, a wave of states and dozens and dozens of anti-voting laws fuelled by the Big Lie and the election deniers now elected to office,” he said.
