Ed Gordon, Maxine Waters, Jennifer McClellan, Rev. Shavon Arline-Bradley and Marc H. Morial Speak on Scena during the annual Black Cau Conference conference conference Conference Foundation Foundation Black Cau foundation for Congressional Black Caucus Foundation).
When black voters remain at home on the day of elections, the results have earnest consequences, according to March H. Moriala, president and general director of the National Urban League.
Morial begged participants at the annual legislative conference of the Black Caucus Foundation Congress Foundation to avoid the myth that their voice does not matter.
Black Voter’s turnout was over 65% in 2008, when Barack Obama was nominated for the Democratic Party, he became the first president of African Americans. The turnout was similar when Obama won the re -election four years later. And nominated by democratic Joe Biden also enjoyed the participation of black voters in the amount of 64% during his campaign in 2020.
But in 2016, when the Republican Donald Trump won his first presidential term, the participation of black voters fell to 59%. It remained the same last year, when Trump won the second term against the former vice president of Kamali Harris, a black woman who was a democratic nominee.
“We must understand that in this country politics and choices matter, and all these bulls – about politics and elections, does not matter that the formula of these suppressing campaigns,” Morial said. “We must not be caught in yesterday’s strategies and program and bring something new.”
With over 100 panels and sessions, a state of democracy and federal activities affecting diversity, equality and integration policy, elections and voting rights were the most critical for conference participants.
The representative of the American Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) Said that this year she devoted some time to the National African-American Museum of History and Culture this year to think about the sacrifices of voting right, among others.
“If that means that I have to give me my life to [her children] It can come true, let it be – she said. “We all have to accept that this is a key moment.”
Panelists discussed distrust, disinformation and unpredictability in Washington, DC and all over the country.
Many years before the ten -year universal list, Trump pressed on republican state legislators to exaggerate congress districts, trying to maintain a compact majority of GOP in the American chamber of representatives during the inter -terminal elections in 2026. Several states, including Texas, Indiana and Ohio, discuss this issue.
Meanwhile, legislators from Missouri have recently adopted a newly gerrymander map of eight state districts, which Governor Mike Kehoe He said he would sign this weekend. The change can give republicans an advantage in a district organized by Rep. Emanuel Cleavera, Democrat in Kansas City.
NAACP questioned the trial in court before New map has been approved. Other lawsuits try to annul the map, because the Missouri constitution requires the legislators to draw districts every 10 years after the universal census.
“The legislator ran through the break in the middle of a decade pushed by Donald Trump himself,” said the US representative Wesley Bell (D-Mo.), Who was a co-organized panel of the judiciary. “Not because Missouri asked for it, but because he knows he can’t win fairly.
“We need independent, transparent processes that put people in front of politics, and we must remain organized, because Trump and his allies are tenacious, so we must also be,” said Bell.
Panelists admitted that Democrats would be arduous to make significant changes, and the Congress controlled by Republicans and the American Supreme Court had a conservative advantage of 6-3.
But the only stood mentioned several dozen times during the discussion: people should vote.
Christopher Bruce, director of politics and sparkling at ACLU in Georgia, said that the evidence is in numbers with about 90 million people who did not vote in last year’s elections.
“If you are not in this democracy, what happens? Literally … he becomes a dictatorship,” said Bruce. “Democracy is established to win. The question is: do you want to have this power to make it happen? And if not, people take your life together.”
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) told the participants that they were required to vote because of the blood spilled by their black ancestors for this occasion, which helped secure the Act on Voice Rights of 1965. This paved the way for the choice of 62 members of the Black Congress Club, as well as 50 latins and 20 Asians.
“We have responsibility, an obligation to make sure that we do exactly what they did. They marched on,” said Green. “The battle is not over. Yes, we feel comfortable. Yes, we have nice cars, but do not confuse comfort with freedom. Do not confuse it with liberation. Do not confuse it with freedom.”
This story was originally produced by News from the Stateswhich is part of StatesRoom, non -information information, which includes the Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by subsidies and coalition of donors as 501C (3) public charity.