WASHINGTON — The commemorative March on Washington held Friday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 voting rights and jobs speech carried an added sense of urgency from Democratic lawmakers and activists ahead of the midterm elections.
The march, held in the nation’s capital beginning on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, came in the wake of the conservative-leaning Supreme Court’s rollback of the Voting Rights Act, which gave way to a state-by-state frenzy to redistrict in the middle of the election cycle. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have used President Donald Trump’s SAVE America voter ID and proof-of-citizenship bill to unite their base.
The event drew a diverse crowd of a few thousand people, who heard a rally cry from civil rights leaders and Democrats: Voters, particularly those who are black, need to get out and vote in the November elections.
“The fact that we still have to fight to maintain and renew voting rights in this country is beyond abysmal, and a truly national disgrace,” said Martin Luther King III, the son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) assailed the Trump administration’s efforts to limit vote-by-mail, conduct voter data-gathering, and accuse blue states of harboring mass numbers of noncitizens on its voter rolls. Sanders also chided Trump and recent Supreme Court rulings as “the most significant assault on voting rights since segregation, targeting virtually every aspect of the electoral system.”
Democrats are hoping this year to avoid a repeat of the last midterm cycle, where the party faced a declining turnout from black voters, who make up the backbone of the party. In 2022, black voter turnout dropped by about 10 percentage points compared to the 2018 midterm elections, from just under 52% in 2018 to 42% in 2022. If Democrats are to retake control of the House and potentially the Senate, where Republicans have stronger control, they’ll need the voting bloc that votes in lockstep with the party more than 90% of the time to show out en masse to the polls.
While the event centered on voting rights, the march also came against the backdrop of a divided Democratic Party over whether to pivot further left to counter Trump’s second term and the GOP’s Washington trifecta. Socialists have found a new footing in the party, with younger and more left-wing insurgents ousting older establishment figures to demand generational and ideological change.
Talk of socialism or the party’s ideological divides was absent from speakers and demonstrators alike, who said the focus should remain on MLK Jr.’s legacy. Even the march’s keynote speakers, who included Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), self-described socialists who’ve promoted the wave of successful socialist insurgents, steered clear of a subject that seemed to lack strong support among some marchers.
“Do I think, at the end of the day, the party needs to find new leadership? Yes,” attendee Jereme Leazier, 41, told the Washington Examiner. “But make sure we’re not getting too far left or too far right … I just want to make sure we don’t lose our core values as a party.”
Two Washington natives and high school friends who reunited at the march by happenstance, Tony Hairston and Harold Hunter, both 62, suggested the ideological differences had become too focused on generational divides.
“We need the younger generation to reach back to us,” Hairston told the Washington Examiner. “If they could listen to us, which they don’t, and learn from us and receive from us, they’ll be alright. But if they keep going their way and doing what they want to do because they feel they have the answers, if you don’t have history, you don’t have the answers. You have to reflect.”
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Despite the socialist movement appearing to resonate little with a crowd largely focused on carrying forward MLK Jr.’s fight, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders managed to energize a thinning crowd after four hours in the sun more than nearly any other speaker.
“Their vision went further than their victories, because America may have agreed to open the lunch counter, but it never committed to us affording the meal,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “They gave us a piece of the freedom. But 63 years later, we are still fighting to afford it.”