[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 11, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H14-H15]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            PASSING VOTING RIGHTS LEGISLATION IS ONLY OPTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, ``We the people of the United States, 
in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure 
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the 
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 
our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United 
States of America.''
  Formulated by the people of the United States to create a more 
perfect union--we know these words. They are the core of our being. Our 
Nation of over 300 million people embraces diversity and individualism, 
has birthed a citizenry that speaks many languages, holds a plethora of 
deep religious beliefs, or none, and practices customs and traditions 
originating on distant shores.
  We are unique. African Americans, in particular, have a unique 
history embedded in slavery, discrimination, and the denial of our 
rights, but voting rights have been our refuge.
  Today I rise and say there is no option other than passing the John 
Robert Lewis Voting Rights Advancement

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Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. There is no option. We do not just 
survive; our Nation thrives because of our shared belief that helps us 
against all odds. It helped us in World War I and World War II and the 
conflicts in and around. It helps us in wars where we have lost our 
young men and women.
  We have a country formed out of many to become one people. Americans 
share the same compact that we are a nation of laws that flow from the 
most crucial and fundamental law, the Constitution of the United 
States.
  The impact of the Constitution and its basic premise can be 
summarized by the simple belief that every individual is entitled to an 
equally valid vote.
  We saw in 2020 that fragile vote that saw the largest turnout in any 
Presidential election in the history of the United States--that is a 
very long time--challenged from its very beginning, challenged on the 
day of the election, continued to be challenged and misrepresented and 
distorted, and election officials attacked and intimidated, even 
removed from office.
  So I stand today on the shoulders not only of Dr. Martin Luther King, 
who I view, in fact, as a modern-day prophet; and our own colleague, 
John Robert Lewis; but I stand on the shoulders of a widow, Coretta 
Scott King, who I got to know in the aftermath of her husband's death. 
She worked without ceasing to have his principles, his values, his 
understanding of the ``beloved community'' recognized and to continue 
the sense of the rightness and righteousness of voting.
  I had the privilege of working for the Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference. It will always be a special part of my history. I had the 
privilege of working with individuals with names that we know, the 
young Hosea Williams, James Orange, some of the generals and foot 
soldiers that were in the army of Dr. Martin Luther King's beloved 
America.
  Yes, I had the privilege--I call it that--of walking on plantations 
to try to register Black sharecroppers frightened and intimidated, 
though dignified, to vote. Their intimidation was real because those 
who owned the general store or the plantation were not eager for those 
Blacks in the South to vote or for those Hispanics and others who 
worked, as Dr. King worked, with Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers. They 
were not eager for them to vote.
  Today, as we are about to watch as a step is to be made, both in 
terms of the speech of a President and Vice President but the actual 
vote in the Senate, we cannot isolate ourselves to focus on one or two 
persons. We really have to focus on who we are as a Nation, that this 
vote binds us together. It is the voice of the people.

  And the Constitution, it trumps any figment of our imagination that 
may consider something legitimate. The filibuster is not legitimate. It 
is a rule of one body of this Congress. It is a rule that we adhere to, 
as civil people do. We adhere to rules. We adhere to those in this 
House. I agree with that until a rule is used to trump and deny the 
basic constitutional values of the 14th Amendment and the Fifth 
Amendment of due process and equality, as it was utilized in the 20th 
century by segregationist Senators to deny civil rights laws.
  Mr. Speaker, it is important that I stand here today on Coretta's 
name and Martin's name and Bobby's name and John's name, that we must 
demand courage. To not vote for the Voting Rights Act is not an option. 
I will not allow that to happen because I will stand with every breath 
in my body to ensure that the American people can vote without 
intimidation, and they will be intimidated without the laws of the John 
R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and as well the Freedom to Vote 
Act.

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