Andrew,
Today is a major milestone for the For The People Act -- the most expansive voting rights bill since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A Senate committee will be debating the bill, an essential step to moving it to a full vote.
This is big -- but we know all too well that everything is a partisan game for folks in the Senate, even when there are such high stakes.
Specifically, it's the filibuster that's keeping this legislation from moving forward. We should call the filibuster exactly as it is: racist. It's an anti-democratic, Jim Crow tool of oppression that requires 60 votes instead of a simple majority to pass any bill in the Senate. It's what pro-slavery senators used to defend Southern interests and what segregationist senators used to hold up civil rights legislation.
Andrew, we're the only people who can make a difference here -- as a collective and as a society moving toward a more just and equitable democracy.
If we don't keep the pressure on our senators to get rid of it, anything we try to accomplish politically will fail in the Senate. It's on us to make sure that elected officials don't get away with blocking Black people from our fundamental rights by making it harder for us to vote. Take less than 5 minutes to write a letter to your senators using our easy tool and urge them to end the filibuster and pass For The People. Without the filibuster, we could have the opportunity to actually live up to the promise of our democracy. We could advance our country towards what it
should have been a long time ago -- a system in which we counter voter suppression attempts head-on, where we dismantle systemic racism without hesitation, where Black people don't just matter but are
liberated. No politicization of our commonsense demands, no white supremacists blocking bills about our health care and safety in the Senate, no way for elected officials to manipulate the rules to counter Black liberation. Can you imagine that?
We all should imagine that -- because if we do this together, we can get it done. So long as we go into the fight to end the filibuster together, we will come out stronger and more powerful than ever. So Andrew, let's hold our elected officials accountable. THEY work for US, and they will hear us out. Use our easy tool to write a letter to your senators, and urge them to end the filibuster and pass the For The People Act immediately. We've watched white supremacy work in the Senate, and the filibuster is something many of them want to hold onto for obvious reasons. But we won't let them.
In love and solidarity,
Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation
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