Biden Defends Voting Rights for African-Americans on the 58th Anniversary of the Selma Events

President Joe Biden prepares to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, along with local leaders and activists.Patrick Semansky (AP)

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, commemorated this Sunday in Selma (Alabama) the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when policemen on horseback beat hundreds of peaceful demonstrators protesting against racial discrimination.

Today was not a round date, a flashy anniversary like that of 2015, when Barack Obama presided over the events, but the speech of the Democratic president at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge -at whose crossing the repression was unleashed- had a clear aroma pre-election, although focused on the defense of voting rights and his personal commitment to black voters, which helped him reach the White House and continue to be a key electoral base for his hypothetical re-election in 2024.

Although the veteran Democrat has not yet made his candidacy public, the content of his speech this Sunday allowed us to infer it, for the vindication of the measures adopted during these two years in office: the struggle of his Administration to provide clean drinking water to the communities underprivileged, or his commitment to expanding the high-speed Internet connection "so that parents are not forced to take their children to a McDonald's so they can connect and do their homework".

Also the provision of affordable child care, nurseries within the reach of all, or the necessary forgiveness of the debt of university students, pending a decision of the Supreme Court.

Biden defended, finally, his stubborn battle against

, as he called them again this Sunday, the big pharmaceutical companies that have imposed on Americans "the highest prices for medicines in any developed country", a battle in which Biden A great

was scored this week

by lowering the price of insulin by one of them.

The president also did not hide his pride in legislative initiatives that constitute the emblem of his presidency, such as the American Rescue Plan, the first important legislation approved and that was the lifeline of the middle class during the pandemic, or the Inflation Reduction Act. , which includes numerous subsidies and bonuses to support SMEs.

In Biden's words this Sunday in Selma, point by point echoes of the speech on the State of the Union that he delivered in Congress at the beginning of February resonated: a vainglory of achievements, but also an agenda of how much remains to be done, on everything with respect to disadvantaged communities such as the African-American: the one that lost the most lives due to the pandemic, the most underrepresented in access to housing or a quality job.

“Selma is a reminder.

The right to vote and have your vote count is the threshold of democracy and freedom, ”Biden said in front of a lectern around which she moved with ease.

“With him, everything is possible.

Without him, without that right, nothing is possible.

And this fundamental right continues to be attacked, ”he stressed.

For Biden, the right to vote is "a guarantee to achieve economic justice and civil rights for the African-American population."

After his speech, brief but vibrant, the president crossed the bridge accompanied by activists and civil rights leaders such as the historic Reverend Jesse Jackson.

The brutality unleashed by security forces in Selma in 1965, beating and gassing protesters crossing the bridge, shocked the country and helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act shortly thereafter, providing the greatest legal protection in US history of minority suffrage.

Among the protesters was John Lewis, a civil rights activist who eventually became a congressman.

Lewis's encouragement lives on in the Freedom to Vote Act and the law that bears his name, the defense of which has led Biden himself to Selma.

Both initiatives contemplate consecrating the day of the elections as a holiday, to facilitate the influx to the polls,

as well as new voter registration and Department of Justice oversight of local electoral jurisdictions with a history of discrimination.

Republicans oppose these measures.

In recent months, especially as a result of the November midterm elections and the Democratic loss of the majority in the House of Representatives, Biden has multiplied his nods to the electorate of color.

Last month the Democratic National Committee approved a change to the party's primary schedule for 2024, making South Carolina, a state with a high percentage of African-American voters, first on the list of races for the nomination, displacing Iowa. In January, Biden delivered a speech at the Atlantean church of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

“If we are to truly honor the legacy of those who marched in Selma on Bloody Sunday, we must continue to fight to ensure and safeguard the freedom to vote,” Vice President Kamala Harris, who presided over last year's commemoration in Selma, said today in a statement. release.

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