{"id":19820,"date":"2013-02-28T15:23:58","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T20:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19820"},"modified":"2013-02-28T15:23:58","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T20:23:58","slug":"john-lewis-to-justice-scalia-the-right-to-vote-is-what-people-died-for-bled-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19820","title":{"rendered":"John Lewis To Justice Scalia: The Right To Vote Is \u2018What People Died For, Bled For\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Rev. Al Sharpton<\/strong> says he could not believe his ears Wednesday morning when he heard the arguments in the Supreme Court to overturn Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. <strong>Rep. John Lewis<\/strong> joins <strong>Sharpton <\/strong>to talk about expectations and implications of the anticipated case decision.<\/p>\n<p>Congressman<strong> John Lewis<\/strong>, a hero of the civil-rights movement, said he was appalled to hear <strong>Justice Antonin Scalia<\/strong> refer to the Voting Rights Act as a \u201cracial entitlement\u201d today. <strong>Rep. Lewis<\/strong> was at the nation\u2019s highest court to listen to arguments about whether the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be struck down as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was unreal, unbelievable, almost shocking, for a member of the court to use certain language,\u201d he said \u201cI can see politicians and even members of Congress\u2013it is just appalling to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For<strong> Lewis<\/strong>, the comments were especially offensive because he knows from experience how hard he and others fought to win those rights. He was severely beaten by Alabama state troopers as he marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Al., on March 7, 1965, a date that\u2019s now known as Bloody Sunday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reverend Al Sharpton<\/strong>, who was also in the court, called <strong>Scalia\u2019s<\/strong> words \u201cshocking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow is that an entitlement?\u201d<strong> Sharpton<\/strong> asked. \u201cI thought African-Americans were citizens! For us to have the right to vote protected is some kind of entitlement program?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lewis<\/strong> agreed, calling the right to vote \u201cprecious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent instrument that we have in a democratic society. And if the courts come to that point where they declare this section, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, unconstitutional, it would be a\u00a0 dagger in the heart of the democratic process.\u201d<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rev. Al Sharpton says he could not believe his ears Wednesday morning when he heard the arguments in the Supreme Court to overturn Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Rep. John Lewis joins Sharpton to talk about expectations and implications of the anticipated case decision. Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the civil-rights [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}