South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement like Lewis, told CNN he didn’t know how long Democrats planned to keep the sit-in going. There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise.
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House of reprentatives Speaker Paul Ryan has refused to schedule a vote for gun control legislation in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting that left 49 people dead.
“Congress must not leave Washington, D.C., without voting on common-sense gun violence prevention legislation to save lives”, the Indianapolis Democrat said in a statement. Democrats controlling the House at the time turned off the cameras amid a GOP push for a vote to expand oil and gas drilling.
A spokesperson for Rep. Ron Kind, Wisconsin’s other Democrat in the House, initially said the congressman didn’t take part because of a meeting.
The hashtag #NoBillNoBreak became a rallying cry for gun control supporters on Twitter and quickly became the top-trending hashtag in the United States on the social media platform. Pictures on various news sites showed Lewis and others sitting on the house floor.
“We truly believe that if there were a vote that we would win the vote, because 85 to 90 percent of the American people. support responsible background checks legislation”, Pelosi said.
Larson and the other Democrats, including the rest of the CT delegation, then sat down on the floor in the well of the House in a protest led by U.S. Rep. On Monday, all four measures proposed failed. As the protest got underway, C-SPAN was quick to point out that it didn’t have the power to control the cameras in the House.
But two protesting representatives, Scott Peters of California and Beto O’Rourke of Texas, provided footage of the sit-in through Periscope and Facebook, and C-SPAN picked up those feeds to offer continuous coverage of the sit-in. Representative John Lewis (GA-Dem), called his fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives to the House floor on Wednesday, June 22, and gave a stirring speech to House Republicans.
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“I call on Speaker [Paul] Ryan, along with my colleagues, to bring these bills to the floor before we break”.
