Oakland car caravan honors John Lewis and voting rights
The event was one of dozens across the nation to draw attention to legislation that seeks to restore or expand balloting rights for all
About 100 people rallied outside the Oakland Arena during a voting rights car caravan Saturday morning to push for the passage of legislation to strengthen and protect voters’ rights and to pay homage to civil rights giant John Lewis.
As they decorated their cars with signs like “Protect our vote” and “Make good trouble” in honor of the late Georgia politician, attendees listened to local East and North Bay leaders speak out against voter suppression and call on the crowd to fight for everyone’s right to vote.
The event was one of dozens across the nation emphasizing several Democrat-backed bills — the For The People Act, also referred to as S. 1, and The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, or H.R. 4 — that seek to restore or expand the right to vote in light of multiple states’ efforts to restrict voting access.
In Georgia, a sweeping law passed earlier this year makes it more difficult to vote absentee, limits the number of drop boxes for ballots and criminalizes giving people water or food while they wait in line to vote, among myriad other restrictions that have galvanized nationwide conversations about voter suppression.
Patrice Lyn, 46, has followed news about
Georgia closely over the past few months from her home in San Jose. She and her daughter Nia, 20, met up for Mother’s Day weekend to attend the caravan together, using window markers to write “VOTE” on their cars.
“I’m very much into what’s going on, and having voter rights for every single state, region, county, town,” Patrice Lyn said. “Everyone matters, and everyone needs to count.”
Multiple speakers referenced the 2013 Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and which H.R. 4 seeks to restore. If H.R. 4 passes, local jurisdictions with a history of discrimination would be required to get federal approval for changes to their voting laws.
S. 1, which will go before a committee vote this month, would introduce a laundry list of voting and election reforms such as allowing people convicted of
felonies to vote after serving their sentence, creating independent commissions to draw congressional districts in states that don’t already have them, and requiring presidential candidates to show their tax returns.
Organizers urged attendees to call their representatives and those in other states to show support for the bills. Queen Jackson, an organizer with Community Change Action, recalled how her small Black community got together for a march in her hometown of Oroville in solidarity with the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
“It really, really, really hurts my heart that we are here again,” Jackson said. “Let’s get these things going, suppress these people’s ability to suppress our vote, and make the change happen that John Lewis fought for his entire life.”
Speakers also read aloud from Lewis’ beloved essay “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation,” which he penned shortly before his death last summer. The longtime representative for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District was one of 13
Freedom Riders who traveled via Greyhound bus in an interracial group to test a Supreme Court decision barring segregation in interstate travel.
On May 9, 1961, Lewis was severely beaten at a bus terminal in South Carolina, lending extra weight to the chosen date of the rally.
San Francisco resident Paul Haifley, 35, became interested in John Lewis’ history and national voting rights after reading the representative’s posthumous essay last summer. A native of North Carolina, he has also watched voting rights erode in his home state, he said.
Monica West, 44, said that as a Black woman who has long paid attention to voting rights, she feels jaded because the current wave of voter restrictions mirrors what has happened across American history. But she attended Saturday’s caravan, which briefly looped around the neighborhood after the speakers wrapped, as a way to get involved in the national conversation.
“It’s like, how can I speak up and make some kind of change?” West asked.