Thousands gathered and marched through the streets of New York City on December 10 – International Human Rights Day – to stand for freedom and call for an end to right- wing voter-suppression efforts. The demonstration was a joint effort of the NAACP and 1199SEIU and was endorsed and supported by a large coalition of other labor and community groups.
The day began with a picket at the Madison Ave. offices of right-wing energy billionaires the Koch Brothers, who are major funders of voter suppression efforts throughout the nation. The efforts mostly affect communities of color, immigrants, the elderly, young people and the poor – all of which tend to vote for Democratic candidates. Some efforts currently being employed to keep these people out of the voting booth are: the passage of new stringent regulations requiring government-issued identification, denying anyone with a felony on their criminal record the right to vote, redistricting which favors conservative and right-wing candidates, and the elimination of early and Sunday voting.
“We know where our civil rights came from and they’re trying to take them away from us,” said Beverley Murdaugh, a rehab CNA at Townhouse Extended Care in Uniondale, NY. “We are doing this for our children and for the lives that have been lost to win our rights, because we know they can be taken away just like that.”
After picketing, the thousands wended their way through Manhattan’s East Side to the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza for a Stand For Freedom rally. Marchers chanted “We Are The 99%” and “This Is What Democracy Looks Like.” They carried signs bearing the images of civil rights martyrs, including Medgar Evers and the four little girls killed in a Birmingham, AL church bombing in 1963.
At the rally, speakers included elected officials, clergy, community organizers and labor leaders. All of them pledged to fight the forces that would curb any American’s hard-won right to vote.
“We are here to stand up to those who would take our sacred right away and that is the right to vote,” said 1199SEIU President George Gresham. “If we have to raise our voices we will raise our voices. Too many good people have died to give us the right to vote.”
Enid Dobson-Grant, a secretary at Nephro Care in Brooklyn, felt that it was so important to be at the march that she too took the day off to be there. “It seems that they want to take us back and make us not have a vote,” she said. “Whoever is not voting needs to register, needs to stand up and be part of this. Otherwise we’re going to go right back and not have our say.”
NAACP President Ben Jealous praised the crowd for bearing up to the chilly December weather. He told a story of a group of elderly women in Missouri denied the right to vote because the county courthouse in their home town had burned down and they couldn’t secure their birth certificates.
We will not forfeit our right to vote,” said Jealous. “When the worst part of the 1% conspires against the 99% we will not sit by passively.”
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