Make The Connection: Voter Suppression and Money in Politics

At the state capitol in Raleigh, N.C., nearly 100,000 activists protest the state's attack on voiting rights and working families.

The NAACP's "Journey for Justice" began this August, 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed. From Selma, Ala., to Washington, D.C., thousands of civil rights, religious, union, student and other activists joined actions, rallies and teach-ins as marchers made their way to the endpoint, a rally and advocacy day at the U.S. Capitol.

America's Journey for Justice started with a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the site of the March 7, 1965, events which came to be known as "Bloody Sunday" after civil rights advocates were viciously attacked by police. It ended 1,000 miles later in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 16, where a thousand activists pledged to mobilize for democracy and to protect the right to vote.

Angie Wells, now a Democracy Initiative senior organizer, was CWA's North Carolina legislative-political coordinator and mobilized hundreds of CWA activists for the march.

"Voting rights are under attack across the country. We're following in the footsteps of those civil rights leaders who fought for voting rights and social justice," she said.

Minerva Faire of CWA Local 3106 in Jacksonville, Fla., left her home at 12:30 a.m. to drive to Washington. "Today, we're talking about everything that matters: jobs, justice in voting, fairness. It's what we talk about in our union and with our NAACP allies," she said.

Earlier this summer, more than 400 CWA members and Democracy Initiative activists, working with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, rallied at the Roanoke, Va., district office of Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee. On the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Shelby decision, activists called out Goodlatte for his efforts to keep voting rights restoration legislation from ever getting to the House floor, and are keeping the focus on him.