an effort to impose a system of american apartheid. you suppress the vote. you elevate the filibuster. you use the electoral college. you use the nullification of the supreme court, which just recently undercut the voting-rights act. to try to thwart the power of this grand and glorious, multicultural nation. civil rights attorney, dayman damon hewitt said this after the white house meeting. we cannot forget our past. now, there s been progress but we re here to say, if you think all progress is linear, it s time to wake up. if you think it s all political, and it s not discrimination, it s time to wake up. if you think it s just a little bit of discrimination and it
and she can speak with us, out of shared experience. i m not saying that everyone has to be a black-american to understand the struggle that we have. but if you are, both, of color and a woman, then our discussion begins on a very fundamental and strong level. one of the very moving experiences that i had today, and my brother, damon, may say the same thing. it was watching the synergy between the president and the vice president of my country. it filled me with a great sense of pride. dr. cole and damon hewitt,
privilege to meet with the president and the vice president of our country. but i, also, must say that the president and the vice president convened this meeting. it is they, who wanted to hear from eight civil-rights leaders. i would not describe our discussion as being overwhelmingly optimistic. but it was profoundly realistic. as the president and the vice president agreed with us, that our democracy is at stake. damon hewitt, you were in a meeting today with the president of the united states. very similar to the kind of meeting that the reverend dr. martin luther king jr. had with the president of the united
everything will be all right. but realism. grounded in the belief that if we cannot, in 2021, protect the rights of all americans to vote. then, our democracy, again, is in serious jeopardy. damon hewitt, you you were in a meeting with the president and vice president. both, lawyers. both, completely conversant on these issues, legally. what it means, in terms of litigation options against voter suppression and so forth. what what did that mean, for you, in terms of the kinds of discussion you could have because of their detailed understanding of of the issue? well, what it means, frankly, is that we have leaders at the highest levels who can go beyond politics, and actually talk about policy.