More than a hundred people gathered in Selma on Saturday to begin the NAACP’s Journey for Justice March.
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Civil rights campaigners have kicked off a 40-day march in the United States to highlight racial injustice for African Americans.
The march will function “train-ins” and different occasions in 5 states – Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia – because it makes its approach to the nation’s capital, the place organizers hope to draw hundreds at a remaining rally on September sixteen.
“We can proceed to be serially outraged, or we will interact in an outrageously patriotic demonstration with a dedication to bringing about reform in this nation”, stated Cornell William Brooks, president and chief government of the NAACP, one of many oldest and largest civil rights teams in america.
The NAACP aims to bring attention to racial injustice across issues like policing, public education, incarceration, voting rights and income inequality.
“We’re marching for our lives, our votes, our jobs, our schools”, NAACP Southwestern Region Organizer Quincy Bates told NBC News.
That event, and a follow-up march from Selma to Montgomery led by Martin Luther King helped build momentum for Congress’ approval of the Voting Rights Act that removed all barriers preventing African-Americans from registering as voters.
Brooks said the NAACP will look to mobilize thousands by the time it arrives in Washington, working with organizations representing labor unions, environmentalists, women’s advocates and Judeo-Christian religious leaders.
As reported by the BBC, the campaigners started the march from Selma, Alabama, which was the starting point of a march 50 years ago that supported watershed legislation enabling black people to vote.
Recent killings of blacks by white police officers as well as a deadly attack on a black church have intensified a national debate about race in the US.
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“In order for the voting rights to be restored, we’re going to need mobilisation, mobilisation from the grassroots”, Sewell said.
