Dear friend,
This week, the Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions- a known racist and white supremacist- to be the new Attorney General of the United States. To be clear, the Republican party forced through a man once deemed too racist by a Republican led, Strom Thurmond helmed Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1980s.
And it doesn’t stop there. Yesterday, while swearing Jeff Sessions into his new role, Trump extended his law & order agenda by signing three executive actions “targeting violent crime” The worst of these recommends a national Blue Lives Matter-esque law to persecute anyone perceived as a threat to police. A move meant to crush movements against police brutality.
With Jeff Sessions at the helm of the Department of Justice, each of these executive orders is promoting the false idea that crime is at an all-time high to justify targeting our communities. We know the facts say the opposite. These orders are aimed at militarizing and bolstering our local police forces, and putting more federal funding in the hands of police.
In this era of governance under Trump’s New Klan, the old rules no longer apply. This fight will require us to dig in deeper than we ever have. We must wage a fight to defend our people and our values at the national and local level like we have never seen before.
This battle against Jeff Sessions’ appointment was the first of the many we will encounter over the next four years. And because of your voice, we were able to begin building a powerful, unstoppable, and unignorable opposition.
Your actions have already been key in the fight to #StopSessions and we've succeeded in the following ways :
- After delivering over 97,000 petitions to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office, he went from Sessions’ uncertain gym buddy to publicly opposing his nomination
- Senator Schumer and his fellow Democrats on the Judiciary Committee took a stand and delayed the committee vote in order to state their opposition for the record
- Hours before Senator Richard Blumenthal took the Senate floor, Color Of Change, along with fellow advocates, delivered 1 million petitions to him demanding Senate Democrats stand up and #StopSessions
- Senate Democrats headed your call and staged an all night talkathon spanning the 30 hour procedural window to state their opposition of Jeff Sessions and that of Coretta Scott King’s on the record
- 47 Senate Democrats took a public stand against a sitting Senator for an appointment, many of whom face reelection in 2018 in states Trump won by large margins
As folks take to the streets and raise their voices even louder online, with your help, we will steadfastly hold enablers of Trump’s agenda accountable. We will continue to push Senate Democrats to stand up and hold the line. And we will fight against any threat to the rights and lives of Black folks, people of color, low income communities, and LGBTQ folks.
In the words of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, “When you get millions of calls and demonstrations and a nominee is exposed for being who they are, it's going to have a profound and positive effect.”
Until Justice is real,
Rashad, Brandi, Anika and the rest of the Color Of Change team
Color Of Change is building a movement to elevate the voices of Black folks and our allies, and win real social and political change. Help keep our movement strong.
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