King made her comments in a Friday evening Instagram Live conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. The two met to commemorate the 56th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The bipartisan, landmark legislation was passed to ensure voting access for people of color, particularly African Americans.
Throughout the conversation, both King and Harris stressed that the maintenance of voting rights and democracy both require ongoing effort from citizens working locally as well as on the state and national levels.
Near the end of their conversation, Bernice King praised the Texas Democrats who left their state in order to block a contentious Republican voting access bill from becoming law. The Texas bill would add new voter ID requirements, punish the unsolicited sending of absentee ballots, ban drive-thru voting and change early voting hours. Democrats said it would restrict ballot access overall.
“We just continue to pray for and thank God for those legislators out of Texas. The courage and bravery, we need more courageous leadership like that because this was not just a political act for them—they took moral leadership to a whole nother level,” King said. “And that’s what it’s gonna take: the braveness, the boldness and new levels of civil disobedience in the spirit of nonviolence.”
Earlier in their conversation, King mentioned that her father’s own participation in the 1960s civil rights movement was based on the nonviolent civil disobedience tactics of Indian anti-colonialist leader Mahatma Gandhi.
Harris later asked viewers to remain engaged in politics on the local, state and national levels in order to make their voices heard. She also asked viewers to do everything they can to help pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
The For the People Act would expand voter access, improve election integrity security, revise campaign finance laws and lay out additional ethics rules for all three branches of the federal government, according to a summary of the legislation.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act would create a way for citizens and the federal government to challenge new state voting laws in the courts. It would also require many changes to election procedures to go through a process called “preclearance,” or approval from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“This is not a partisan issue,” King said. “I can’t say it enough: This is not a Democrat issue, not a Republican issue. This is a for the people issue.”
A February poll found that 57 percent of Republican voters support the For the People Act. Congressional Republicans have opposed both bills as needless, calling them a “power grab” on the part of Democrats.
In the current session, Republicans in state legislatures have introduced at least 250 new laws to limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting.
Newsweek contacted Harris’ office for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
