In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in April undermining a key tenant of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, AFGE National President Everett Kelley recently joined more than 5,600 concerned citizens in Alabama to protest the decision and its impact on marginalized communities nationwide.
Activists from the NAACP and more than 90 civil rights, voting rights, labor, faith, and community organizations from across the country traveled to Selma and Montgomery on May 16 in response to the April 29 ruling by the high court, which struck down a majority-Black congressional district created in Louisiana under a provision in the Voting Rights Act that up until now has been interpreted as allowing states to use racial data to ensure equal voting representation.
More than 1,000 faith leaders led attendees across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma – the same bridge where civil rights activists were attacked in 1965 while marching to the state capitol in Montgomery, leading to the passage of the landmark 1965 act.
In Montgomery – just 80 miles from where he was born and raised – President Kelley spoke about growing up in the tiny town of Goodwater and, at just three years old, being turned away from the front door of the restaurant where his mother worked because Blacks had to use the back entrance.
“Those marchers from Selma, they walked 54 miles to this very ground. They had been beaten bloody at the bridge. But they came back. They kept walking. For what? So a little Black boy from Goodwater wouldn’t have to use the back door. So my mother could cast a ballot. So I could grow up to lead 800,000 federal workers. I owe my life to those foot soldiers. And you do, too. Whether you know it or not,” Kelley said.
Kelley spoke of the attacks facing the federal workers AFGE represents who are just trying to do their jobs on behalf of the American people – including the attorneys, investigators, and other professionals who enforce our nation’s civil rights and anti-discrimination laws at federal departments and agencies including Education, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The attempts to politicize the non-partisan civil service and strip workers of basic workplace rights and protections mirror what is occurring in statehouses across the country as elected leaders race to redraw congressional districts so they benefit the party in power.
“The same spirit that threw rocks at me as a little Black boy in Goodwater is still here. It wears suits now. It sits in legislatures. It sits in courts. It draws the Congressional maps. But it is the same spirit. And it is the same fight,” Kelley said. “The attack on federal workers and the attack on voting rights are not two fights. They are one fight. And we are going to win it.”
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