You’ve built a broad coalition of voters: Black, white, Latino, Asian American, urban, suburban, rural, working class, and middle class.Īnd it’s worked: You’ve changed the state by bringing more people, legally, to the polls. Here in Georgia, for years, you’ve done the hard work of democracy: registering voters, educating voters, getting voters to the polls.
Protect from enemies foreign and domestic torrent#
And now the defeated former president and his supporters use the Big Lie about the 2020 election to fuel torrent and torment and anti-voting laws - new laws designed to suppress your vote, to subvert our elections. The United States Supreme Court, in recent years, has weakened the Voting Rights Act. Women were denied the right to vote until just 100 years ago.
Protect from enemies foreign and domestic full#
Without it, nothing is possible, but with it, anything is possible.īut while the denial of fair and free elections is un-democratic, it is not unprecedented.īlack Americans were denied full citizenship and voting rights until 1965. You know, for the right to vote and to have that vote counted is democracy’s threshold liberty. We must stand strong and stand together to make sure January 6th marks not the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance of our democracy. Hear me plainly: The battle for the soul of America is not over. (Applause.)īut let me be clear: This is not about me or Vice President Harris or our party it’s about all of us. That’s why we’re here today to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle, forces that attempted a coup - a coup against the legally expressed will of the American people - by sowing doubt, inventing charges of fraud, and seeking to steal the 2020 election from the people. (Applause.) But democracy’s - but democracy’s visi- victory was not certain, nor is democracy’s future. And each successive generation continued that ongoing work.īut then the violent mob of January 6th, 2021, empowered and encouraged by a defeated former president, sought to win through violence what he had lost at the ballot box, to impose the will of the mob, to overturn a free and fair election, and, for the first time - the first time in American history, they - to stop the peaceful transfer of power. And from those moments of darkness and despair came light and hope.ĭemocrats, Republicans, and independents worked to pass the historic Civil Rights Act and the voting rights legislation. They stopped - time stopped, and they forced the country to confront the hard truths and to act - to act to keep the promise of America alive: the promise that holds that we’re all created equal but, more importantly, deserve to be treated equally. They stopped when John and many others seeking justice were beaten and bloodied while crossing the bridge at Selma named after the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. In their lifetimes, time stopped when a bomb blew up the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and murdered four little girls. And here in the district - as was pointed out - represented and reflected the life of beloved friend, John Lewis. We visited the sacred Ebenezer Baptist Church and paused to prayed at the crypt of Dr.
We stand on the grounds that connect Clark Atlanta - Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and near Spelman College - the home of generations of advocates, activists, educators and preachers young people, just like the students here, who have done so much to build a better America. Today, we come to Atlanta - the cradle of civil rights - to make clear what must come after that dreadful day when a dagger was literally held at the throat of American democracy. Last week, President Harris and I stood in the United States Capitol to observe one of those “before and after” moments in American history: January 6th insurrection on the citadel of our democracy. In the words of Scripture, they remind us to “hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gate.” And they force us to confront hard truths about ourselves, about our institutions, and about our democracy. They rip away the trivial from the essential. THE PRESIDENT: In our lives and the lives of our nation - the life of our nation, there are moments so stark that they divide all that came before from everything that followed.
0 kommentar(er)
