Civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery speaks at an event announcing state lawmakers from around the county have formed an alliance they say will combat restrictive voting laws, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, in Atlanta. Legislators from Georgia, Nevada and Iowa, among other states, announced the initiative Wednesday at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. once served as pastor.ATLANTA – State lawmakers from around the country have formed an alliance they say will combat restrictive voting laws that have proliferated in recent years in Republican-run states, changes that won’t face the same federal scrutiny after the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a key portion of the Voting Rights Act.
Legislators from Georgia, Nevada and Iowa, among other states, announced the initiative Wednesday at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. once served as pastor.
Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams described the effort as nonpartisan, but leaders of the new organization — called American Values First — are all Democrats. Abrams said the group will promote model legislation and publish best-practices on how voting rights groups should respond in states that have already enacted new limits on early voting, rolled back registration opportunities and imposed new requirements that voters present identification before getting a ballot.
One of King’s last living contemporaries, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, joined lawmakers and called on an enthusiastic crowd at Ebenezer to join a renewed civil rights movement.
“There must be something to this vote, because they spend so much time and money trying to take it away,” Lowery said, referring to Republican legislators and governors as “Dixiecrats,” an old label for Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights measures, including the Voting Rights Act.