was the rallying cry of confederate sympathizers who believed the wrong side emerged victorious in the war between the states. For nearly a century and a half, whenever it or similar sentiments came up, either through the malignant words of unapologetic bigots or etched boldly on specially made confederate flags, the rest of us, including many southerners, would roll our eyes and let it pass as the deluded fantasy of a sad minority mired in the past and hopelessly out of touch with reality.
As it turns out, we were the ones who were out of touch with reality. Thanks to the recent ruling by the Supreme Court striking down the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the white Republican legislatures in North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and a variety of other southern states, are busy ensuring that the south will rise again by rolling back the voting rights of the poor, old, young and most especially, people of color who don't tend to vote Republican in national elections. Welcome to 1965.
Oh, it won't be exactly the 1965 we remember. We won't be seeing any snarling German Shepherds, water blasting fire hoses, billy-club wielding policemen or white hoods and burning crosses, but make no mistake about it, we are moving the clock back to 1965 as surely as if we all stepped into Marty McFly's time-traveling DeLorean. If the Republicans have their way, and it appears that they will, only white, christian, middle-class and wealthy constituents will be able to vote in the south with any ease or assurance.
Take North Carolina for example. No sooner had the ink dried on the Supreme Court's stupefying decision to strike down the congressionally supported Voting Rights Act, then North Carolina came up with a whole new set of voter regulation reforms that would warm the cockles of the late Jesse Helms' heart, if anyone could prove that he had one. Not only are Republican legislators proposing strict voter ID laws that will virtually disenfranchise more than 100,000 voters; they are also proposing the elimination of early voting, same-day voting registration, and voting on the Sunday before the election, all of which are aimed at suppressing the participation of minority, student and elderly voters in North Carolina. Other southern states are proposing similar changes to their voting laws.
Congress could step in and remedy the situation by passing a new Voting Rights Act, but since Republicans are in a majority in the house, that has as much chance of happening as the poverbial pig flying. So the question becomes, what are we going to do about it?
I say if the Republicans want to take us back to August 6, 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, and undo it, then by all means, let's go there with them. Except I propose that we go a little further back in 1965 to the event that made the Voting Rights Act happen. On March 21st, Dr. Martin Luther King led a people's 4 day march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama that ended on March 25th with 25,000 people, a huge number in those days, on the steps of the capitol demonstrating their support for voting rights for African Americans. Under federal protection and with the whole world watching, those marchers changed the course of history.
Naively, we thought that change would last, but apparently it only needed a Supreme Court on conservative steroids to undo all that was accomplished. If it's back to the drawing board, then let's really go back to the drawing board and organize another people's march. This time, we start off somewhere in North Carolina and end up on the steps of their capitol in Raleigh. I have no doubt that we will attract far more than 25,000 people willing to march for voting rights. Heck, if Jon Stewart could get 215,000 to come to Washington D.C. for his Rally to Restore Sanity this should be a piece of cake.
With the court on their side and power in their grasp, Republicans believe they can resurrect the south or at least the south that we all hoped was gone forever. We need to let them know that they cannot. The world is still watching.