Rev. Al Sharpton: Supreme Court ‘canceled’ Martin Luther King’s dream

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

Rev. Al Sharpton appeared live on MSNBC’s Jansing and Company today to give his initial reactions to the Supreme Court’s major ruling on the Voting Rights Act. Here’s what he had to say:

I think this is devastating I think when you look at the fact that just last year when we saw several states go into schemes of voter suppression that it was established by the data it disenfranchised black and Latino voters more than anyone else and that three states were blocked because of the exact section they just outlawed today.

The justice department stopped this in South Carolina and Texas so now those states could have proceeded according to this ruling and it would have directly impacted a lot of black voters so this is devastating. I think that what we must do is really put pressure on congress now to deal with this but we’re dealing with a congress that is going to be hard to pressure on so this is going to call for mass mobilization and a lot of pressure from the civil rights community and friends but any way shape or form that one is going to act as though this is a problem of the past you only need to look at 2012 and the impact of changing voter i.d laws, early voting laws and the disproportion of impact it had on Black voters and the fact that justice department use Section Five to stop that in some states clearly shows why we’re not talking about 1965 we’re talking about 2013 we just came out of elections that we had to use Section Five to protect voters.

The question is can we mobilize and build across a line for the right correlation. Let’s not act like in 65 they wanted to do it the people forced it and I think from a lot of mobilization which we did last year and a lot of coalescing I think we can make this happen but let’s not act as though the whole country just got up in 1965 and said let’s get voting rights and let’s not act like it is just in the South there congressional districts in New York that was part of this voting rights section, voting rights Section Five so we’re talking about a problem that is nationwide it was basically in the South , but its nationwide that is now given a green light for states if they want to,  to make changes without pre-clearance that is a devastating blow to those of us that need that protection particularly given the voter suppression screams that we saw in 2012 we’re not going to take it without a real fight  and real resistance and we will prevail as we did in 1965.

We build a monument to Dr. King in part of at least half of what Dr. Kings dream was about was voter rights 65 they just revoked that they just canceled the dream and the children of the dream are not going to sit by and allow that to happen.

But not only is it the day of the decision it’s a day that we didn’t know that the decision was coming we didn’t know if it was going to be yesterday or Thursday or last week I don’t think that’s fair if he want to see mobilization tell him to be in Washington on August 24^th.

The difference is that last year when they changed a lot of these laws we showed an unusual turn out blacks outvoted whites last year even though we cut back in some states in early voting even though it was voter i.d what they may have done  is give the impetus that’s going to change this congress next year because we’re going to vote with a passion because it’s not about Obama now it’s literally our right to vote you didn’t have the Supreme Court say there’s no racism I think Pete Williams said “oh yeah there’s still a problem” but we’re going to take back the medicine that has been remedying  the problem the patient is still sick but we’re going to take what made the patient feel a little better till you can tell us how you can heal the patient total which  in many ways is a schizophrenic ruling as far as I’m concerned.