The future of our democracy demands no less.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King holiday presents a maddening paradox for anyone concerned about the ideals espoused by the slain civil rights leader. King’s work and life will be honored and lauded across the nation today in ways that would have been unimaginable in the 1960s. And yet, the laws that would concretize and guarantee the freedoms and rights — particularly the right to vote — King fought for continue to be usurped, challenged and unraveled. Which bring us to the travesty happening right now in the U.S. Senate, where a majority of Republican lawmakers are set to use a filibuster to block bills that would help guarantee voting rights. The Senate could vote for a rule change that would disallow the filibuster and clear the path for the bills’ passage. But Republican senators, along with a pair of turncoat Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., oppose the change in rules. The King holiday demands we see these efforts (and the obstructionism of Sinema and Manchin) for what they are: an assault on democracy that is every bit as repugnant as the attempted coup on Jan 6,2021. And the best way to honor King’s legacy is for lawmakers, President Joe Biden and the public to fight and scrap to get the laws passed. The future of the democracy demands no less.
