Another Blight on American History

Floor Speech

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Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Virginia for leading this Special Order tonight and my colleagues who have spoken on the floor in shock and dismay with respect to what the Supreme Court did in the Voting Rights Act ruling just a few days ago, and also what the Virginia Supreme Court did in the ruling that it passed down.

I will say this: Many of my neighbors, friends, and the students I have had a chance to speak to recently were also surprised, shocked, disappointed, and dismayed by what happened.

They have also been surprised by President Trump sending the FBI in to seize ballots in Atlanta to try to prove that he won an election 4 years ago that he obviously lost.

They have been surprised, dismayed, and disheartened by what they saw with respect to ICE in Minneapolis and the recognition that there is a strong possibility that ICE and the National Guard may be showing up in polling places in November.

They have also been shocked and surprised that icons like Jim Clyburn and Emanuel Cleaver, who served this body and this Nation honorably for decades, are at the risk of being forced out of office based on these unfair rulings.

I will say this: I have been really heartened by what I saw from those young people when I was speaking to them over the past 2 weeks. They were concerned that they couldn't live up to the moment, that there was nothing that they could do, and that they were too young to have an impact.

Yet, I reminded them of people like John Lewis, who was 18 or 19 when he began his work in the civil rights movement that culminated in the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted just a few weeks ago. I reminded them that Dr. Martin Luther King was only 25 when he led the Montgomery bus boycott and was still working on his dissertation and raising a family, all at the same time.

I reminded them that there were many leaders who came before us-- young people, men and women--who saw the need for service and a call to have an impact, and they stepped into that void.

I reminded them that the Freedom Riders had people on at 18, 19, and 20 years old who they forced to write and sign wills before they got on those buses because they knew that they would be violently attacked, and they were.

We can meet this moment, just as those ancestors met those moments, just as our predecessors met those moments. All we need to do is go to the voting booth.

We have to make sure we get out there and do that work, push in the streets, campaign, stand up, make sure we fight, speak, have our voices heard, and bring everybody out who we can because it is critical for us to win in November in order to turn this around and show them that, despite all the efforts that they have made--the Trump Supreme Court, the seizure of the ballots, all the things that they have been doing with the executive orders and the like--we can defeat all of those in November. But we have to show up, and we will.

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