"America's Journey for Justice" Arrives Next Week in Washington for Rally and Advocacy Day

Fifty years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, Americans who are fighting for the crucial right to vote are again coming to Washington in a "Journey for Justice" to fight to restore that right.

CWA District 6 Vice President Claude Cummings, NAACP President Cornell Brooks and former CWA President Larry Cohen, who heads the Democracy Initiative, marched together into Raleigh, N.C., as part of the Journey for Justice. The march, which began on August 1 in Selma, AL, will end in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 16 with a rally and Advocacy Day.

In Raleigh, the crowd rallied at the state Capitol. "The union movement and the civil rights movement have a long history and a solid partnership that today is growing even stronger," Cummings said. "That's how we will begin to restore justice and democracy and move closer to achieving social justice for all."

"We march because it is right for the people to vote," Brooks told the crowd. "We march because our people shed blood, sweat and tears for the right to vote." See the marchers and speakers here.

The Supreme Court of the United States wrecked the Voting Rights Act in its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling that freed nine mostly Southern states – including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas – from having changes to their election laws pre-cleared by the U.S. Justice Department. Legislatures in many of those states, as well as Ohio, Wisconsin and others, immediately passed laws that placed significant barriers to voting by people of color, the elderly and young people. The barriers included, but are not limited to, requiring voters to produce government-issued photo identification but making it exceedingly difficult to obtain the identification.

North Carolina had one of the worst Voter ID requirements, which is currently being fought in the courts. The Voting Rights Advancement Act will return those states back to the jurisdiction of the Justice Department as well as add new states that have since acted to place barriers in the path of people seeking to vote.

"America's Journey for Justice" has featured teach-ins in almost 40 locations between Selma, AL, and Washington, D.C., including one last week organized by CWA with the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP that took place in a Raleigh, NC, church that was attended by more than 160 people.

CWA District 6 Vice President Claude Cummings and Democracy Initiative Chairman Larry Cohen with the CWA contingent that marched 15 miles to attend the rally in Raleigh.