- Good afternoon, Atlanta.
Good afternoon.
Jillian, thank you for that beautiful introduction
and for your leadership.
I can't wait to see you -- what you do next.
Thank you.
So last week, one year -- Yes, please do sit.
Last week, one year after a violent mob
breached the United States
Capitol, the President of the United States
and I spoke from its hallowed halls,
and we made clear -- we swore to preserve, protect,
and defend the Constitution of the United States.
And we will.
We will fight.
We will fight to safeguard our democracy.
We will fight to secure our most fundamental freedom,
the freedom to vote.
And that is why we have come to Atlanta today
to the cradle of the civil rights movement,
to the district that was represented
by the great congressman John Lewis,
on the eve of the birthday of Reverend
Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
More than 55 years ago,
men, women, and children marched from Selma to Montgomery
to demand the ballot.
And when they arrived at the State Capitol in Alabama,
Dr King decried what he called normalcy --
the normalcy,
the complacency that was denying people the freedom to vote.
"The only normalcy anyone should accept,"
Dr King said, "is the normalcy of justice."
And his words resonate today.
Over the past few years, we have seen so many anti-voter laws
that there is a danger
of becoming accustomed to these laws,
a danger of adjusting to these laws as though they are normal,
a danger of being complacent, complicit.
Anti-voter laws are not new in our nation,
but we must not be deceived into thinking they are normal.
We must not be deceived into thinking a law
that makes it more difficult for students to vote is normal.
We must not be deceived into thinking a law
that makes it illegal to help a voter
with a disability vote by mail is normal.
There is nothing normal about a law
that makes it illegal to pass out water or food
to people standing in long voting lines.
And I have met with voters in Georgia.
I have heard your outrage about the anti-voter law here
and how many voters will likely be kept from voting.
And Georgia is not alone.
Across our nation, anti-voter laws
could make it more difficult
for as many as 55 million Americans to vote.
That is one out of six people in our country.
And the proponents of these laws
are not only putting in place obstacles to the ballot box,
they are also working to interfere with our elections
to get the outcomes they want
and to discredit those that they don't.
That is not how a democracy should work.
My fellow Americans,
do not succumb to those who would dismiss this assault
on voting rights as an unfounded threat,
who would wave this off as a partisan game.
The assault on our freedom to vote
will be felt by every American
in every community in every political party.
And if we stand idly by, our entire nation
will pay the price for generations to come.
As Dr King said, the battle is in our hands.
And today the battle is in the hands of the leaders
of the American people, those in particular
that the American people sent to the United States Senate.
Two landmark bills sit before the United States Senate --
the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
and the Freedom to Vote Act.
And these two bills represent the first real opportunity
to secure the freedom to vote since the United States Supreme
Court gutted the Voting Rights Act nearly a decade ago.
We do not know when we will have this opportunity again.
Senate Republicans have exploited arcane rules
to block these bills.
And let us be clear.
The Constitution of the United States
gives the Congress the power to pass legislation.
And nowhere -- nowhere does the Constitution give a minority
the right to unilaterally block legislation.
The American people have waited long enough.
The Senate must act.
And the bottom line is this.
Years from now, our children and our grandchildren,
they will ask us about this moment.
They will look back on this time,
and they will ask us not about how we felt.
They will ask us, what did we do?
We cannot tell them that we let a Senate rule stand
in the way of our most fundamental freedom.
Instead, let us tell them that we stood together
as people of conscience and courage.
Let us tell them we acted with the urgency
that this moment demands.
And let us tell them we secured the freedom to vote,
that we ensured free and fair elections,
and we safeguarded our democracy for them and their children.