Bernice King calls out #MLKDay virtue signaling, while real activists march on D.C.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated on social media. It's disturbing that the civil rights leader's youngest daughter knows that.
King warned her followers on the eve of the national holiday that there would be people who would be using the day to promote injustice.

The first thing Monday was #MLKDay. The real story was on the streets of Washington, D.C. where hundreds of activists marched to protect the voting rights of Black and brown Americans. The event doubled as the annual D.C. Peace Walk and marked a peak moment of visibility for the ongoing Deliver for Voting Rights campaign.

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Martin Luther King III said that he and his family are working to restore the voting rights protections that his father and many other civil rights leaders fought for. We will not accept empty promises in pursuit of my father's dream.

The demonstrators marched over the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to symbolize the importance of the federal government committing to voting rights in the same way it committed to a bipartisan infrastructure package last November. The campaign calls on Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, as well as end the filibuster, a legislative delaying tactic that was started in the Jim Crow era. Democrats hope to pass it this week.

Civil rights leaders are alarmed by legislators' reluctance to take up the cause, as well as the Supreme Court ruling last year that undermined the Black and brown right to vote. Half-baked promises to do better, let alone the kind offered once a year on social media, are no longer cutting it.
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"That's to be expected, and not just regarding voting legislation," King said in her Sunday thread. There will be people who are involved in bombing children. There will be people who don't care about poverty. The Prison Industrial Complex will have people who cultivate it. And so on.
King urged supporters of her father and family to push for sustainable change instead of getting caught up in the disingenuous churn.
My father taught about the Triple Evils of Racism, Militarism, and Poverty. King said that he taught about the Beloved Community and Nonviolence. Please join a worldwide coalition for justice.

The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change has information about the Deliver for Voting Rights campaign.