I know, I know.
I’ve heard all the arguments about how the Voting Rights Act isn’t dead, about how there are still lots of options for those alleging infringement of their civil rights, about how the Supreme Court’s June ruling really only tinkers with this fundamental human rights protection.
And, you know, standing on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma this summer,
I’m.Just.Not.Buying.It.
What’s scary to me this Halloween?
That our Supreme Court could honestly think that, somehow, history couldn’t repeat itself. That racism is over. And that getting a lawyer to fight for your right to vote is anything like equal citizenship.
That’s just frightening.
I have often found myself wishing that those who, today, take their right to vote for granted would have to pass a citizenship test, witnessing what aspiring Americans go through for the same chance to help shape our democracy.
I’ve altered that: now I wish that we all had to walk in the steps of John Lewis and the freedom fighters whose steps marked a generation and threw down a gauntlet that changed us forever.
It was an incredibly powerful walk across that bridge, imagining the fear and remembering how, just a few weeks before, the highest court in the United States prematurely declared that the fight was won.
We must not only not forget. That suggests that this is, somehow, a relic of history.
We must, instead, keep walking.
To do otherwise is too scary to contemplate.
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Ready to walk
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Sobbing with every step
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My husband knew I would want this picture
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The church where courage was forged
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