Tag: civil-rights advocates
How Freedom Was Used to Defend Residential Segregation
Conservatives in America have, in recent months, used the idea of freedom to argue against wearing masks, oppose vaccine mandates, and justify storming the Capitol. They routinely refer to themselves as “freedom-loving Americans.” Freedom, as a cause, today belongs almost entirely to the right.
This was not always the case. In the early 1960s, civil-rights activists invoked freedom as the purpose of their struggle. Martin Luther King Jr. used the word equality once at the March on Washington, but he
Can Joe Biden Work With Republicans?
With rare exceptions, Joe Biden throughout his presidency has stressed his determination to cooperate with the GOP whenever possible and has minimized his personal confrontations with Republican leaders on both the national and state levels. That strategy has yielded the tangible benefit of the big bipartisan infrastructure bill now marching toward Senate approval, likely in the next few days. It has also allowed him to build strong working relationships with several Republican governors over combating the coronavirus pandemic and
Why Won’t Biden End the Filibuster?
For all the passionate words President Joe Biden delivered in defense of voting rights in his speech yesterday, it was the one word he never mentioned that provoked the strongest response from civil-rights advocates: filibuster.
Nowhere in his remarks did Biden utter what may go down as the political word of the year. The Senate procedure known as the filibuster now stands as the insuperable obstacle to the new federal voting-rights legislation that represents Democrats’ best chance to counter