(AURN News) — Tomorrow, the streets of Alabama will echo with footsteps that history has heard before. The stakes are new, but the threat is urgent and familiar. Thousands of protesters are expected to descend on Selma and Montgomery on Saturday for a national day of action called “All Roads Lead to the South.”
More than 90 organizations are behind the effort. Organizers say the march is a response to a Supreme Court ruling that dealt one of the most significant blows to the Voting Rights Act in a century.
On April 29, all six Republican-appointed justices voted to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the case Louisiana v. Callais. Section 2 was considered the law’s backbone, allowing communities of color to challenge district maps they said diluted their voting power. Civil rights leaders now say those protections have effectively been stripped away.
The day will begin at 9 a.m. at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the same ground where marchers were beaten in 1965 in a moment that shocked the nation and helped produce the Voting Rights Act.
By afternoon, the crowd will move to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery for a mass rally running until 5 p.m.
Organizers say Southern lawmakers are already moving to redraw maps and roll back Black political power following the Supreme Court ruling.
Solidarity events are planned in cities across the country as organizers recommit to rebuilding what they say was lost.
Click play to listen to the report from AURN White House Correspondent Ebony McMorris. For more news, follow @E_N_McMorris & @aurnonline.
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