For Immediate Release
March 6, 2023
WASHINGTON – Redistricting advocates including Alabama Forward, Equal Ground, Florida Rising, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, today remembered ‘Bloody Sunday.’ In releasing the following statement, they urged voting rights organizers to continue the fight that civil rights leaders began more than 58 years ago:
“We commemorate ‘Bloody Sunday,’ while acknowledging that many of us are confronting our own Edmund Pettus Bridge via attacks on the right to vote and inequitable and racially-discriminatory legislative maps,” said Evan Milligan, executive director of Alabama Forward.
“Although it has been 58 years since ‘Bloody Sunday,’ our communities are still struggling under the weight of oppression,” said Andrea Mercado, executive director of Florida Rising.
“I come to the 58th remembrance of ‘Bloody Sunday,’ mindful that Selma (and many Southern cities) has weathered, and continues to weather, many storms,” said Mitchell Brown, Senior Counsel for Voting Rights, Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Although the fight looks different, our communities are once again resisting efforts to restrict the right to vote. We are also awaiting a decision in Merrill vs. Milligan, among other redistricting and voting rights cases at the Supreme Court. As if that wasn’t enough, Selma continues to navigate the fallout from a devastating tornado that displaced many. There can be no celebration until all people have been made whole, and until the threats to voting rights have ceased.”
“We are clear that the only hope for justice is staying the course,” said Ashley K. Shelton, founder and president of the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. “Attacks on the right to vote and efforts to enshrine inequitable and unfair redistricting lines are meant to wear us down, but we must stay the course.”
“In the same way that our ancestors persisted – even amid death and threats of death – we too will persist,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, executive director of Equal Ground. “What we are seeing in Florida, in terms of attacks on Black history, efforts to silence discussions on race, restrict the right to vote, and oppress political opponents is emblematic of a new wave of Jim Crow. But we will continue to organize and resist.”
“There are no parts of the nation that should be seeded to legislators who wake up every day with a desire to suppress and abridge the right to vote,” said Prentiss Haney, executive director of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. “Until every state has equitable and fair maps that afford all communities the ability to elect candidates of choice, we will continue the journey our ancestors began 58 years ago.”
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