Leaders around the Nation Encouraged to Push Congress on VRA Reauthorization
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 7/5/2006
All of the great civil rights legislation of the past 40 years was passed on the strength of nationwide grassroots efforts.With the reauthorization of the nation's most successful civil rights law remains held up by a small group of renegade Republicans, national civil rights groups are mobilizing people around the country to get it back on track.
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) held a national conference call on June 29 with civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D. Ga., Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D. Mass., and others to discuss collective efforts to renew and restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA).
Nearly 200 state and local leaders joined the call. Representatives from national groups provided updates on the status of the bill in the House and the Senate and affirmed the importance of on-the-ground efforts.
"It is only the grassroots that gets this done," said Debo Adegbile, associate director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. "The VRA is the peoples' act."
The reauthorization had built momentum ever since the May 2 bipartisan, bicameral introduction of "The Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006", which was hailed by observers as "historic." The bill made it out of the House Judiciary Committee without amendments on May 10, by a 33-1vote.
On June 21, the day of a scheduled House vote, a small group of Republicans stalled the momentum of the bill. Despite a record that contains more than 12,000 pages of documents detailing gross voting rights violations in the states and counties covered by the VRA, the group, mostly representatives from Southern states, claimed that the law is punitive.
Congress goes on recess in August and returns in September, when it will turn its attention to appropriations bills. National leaders on the call discussed how important it is to put pressure on Congress to pass the bill before the August recess.
"This is a critical period [for the reauthorization]," said LCCR Executive Director Wade Henderson.
Leaders on the ground were encouraged to make phone calls to their congressional representatives and tell them to move the bil; sign and circulate petitions; and set up meetings with their representatives in their home districts. Sen. Kennedy underscored the importance of grassroots efforts, stating, "We need all hands on deck."
Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME, the nation's largest and fastest growing public service employees union, said that nothing is more important at this critical time than grassroots efforts. He reminded everyone that the VRA was passed in 1965 because the labor community and the civil rights community, "the two strongest forces in the nation's history," joined forces to get it done.
