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Vice President Kamala Harris pushed for action on federal voting rights legislation during a virtual appearance at a Georgia event to commemorate what would have been the 93rd birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.
The event, which was televised by the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, was held in Atlanta at the Ebenezer Baptist Church — the congregation which King co-pastored with his father before his assassination in 1968.
Calling King a “prophet” that “saw the present exactly as it was and the future as it could be,” Harris tied her remarks in with the Biden Administration’s push for expanded voting rights.
“Today, our freedom to vote is under assault,” Harris said.
Harris recalled King’s 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery to push for the passage of the Voting Rights Act. She said the best way to follow King’s legacy was to update the law to keep voting equity in place.
“If we stand idly by, our nation will pay the price for generations to come,” Harris said. “…we must not be complacent or complicit. We must not give up, and we must not give in.”
Harris specifically called on the Senate “to do its job” and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. That law would attempt to end racial discrimination in Congressional redistricting.
In a proclamation issued by the White House last week, Biden again tied King’s legacy with his administration’s push to expand voting rights.
“Living up to his legacy, and what Dr. King believed our Nation could become requires more than just reflection — it requires action,” it read. “We must protect the hard-fought gains he helped achieve and continue his unfinished struggle.”
“That is why the Congress must pass Federal legislation to protect the right to vote — a right that is under attack by a sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion.”
“Just as in Dr. King’s time, there are those who now say that change would be too disruptive and that these urgent needs can wait,” Biden said in the statement. “But we must resist complacency, summon new resolve to advance the cause of freedom and opportunity, and do our part to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”
