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Bloody Sunday

Joyce Vance Mar 8

Today marks the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. The Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, march for voting rights was halted by Alabama state troopers and sheriffs who tear-gassed and beat the marchers. A trooper beat Future Georgia Congressman John Lewis in the head with a nightstick.

Given the brutality of the attacks, he was lucky to end up with a concussion. As serious as that was, it could have been far worse.

The national press reported what was happening in Selma to the rest of the country. The outrage it generated across the country was a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed later that year. It created federal protection for voters and outlawed the supposed literacy tests that kept Black people from voting if they couldn’t answer ridiculous questions meant to exclude them from participation in elections—things like how many bubbles there were on a bar of soap or how many jelly beans there were in a jar.

Brutality no longer outrages some Americans. They watch immigrants rounded up, zip-tied, frog marched into El Salvadoran prisons, and assaulted by federal agents in the process of detaining them. They read about people herded into facilities where there are bugs in the food and they sleep on concrete floors. They watch footage of American citizens being shot on the streets of Minneapolis and learn that an agency covered up the shooting death of a Texas man for a year. And they are unmoved.

How we became that country, or at least how MAGA became that country, is hard to comprehend. People readily swapped out their religious beliefs to worship at the altar of a man who doesn’t believe in kindness or decency. MAGA Republican politicians, which is to say virtually everyone in the Senate and the House, fear Trump more than they care about truth and justice.

Earlier this week, we attacked a girls’ school. The Wall Street Journal reported that, “U.S. military investigators think American forces likely were responsible for a strike that killed dozens of children at a girls elementary school in Iran, a U.S. official said. The investigation hasn’t reached a final conclusion.” The New York Times reported that the strike on the school in Minab “appears to have been part of an attack on an adjacent naval base in southern Iran, where officials said U.S. forces were operating.”

Today, Trump was asked about the attack and who was responsible. He answered with a lie. He said Iran was responsible. Even Pete Hegseth couldn’t back that up. Standing next to the president, he said the attack was still “under investigation.”

Where is the outrage? On the anniversary of Selma, a moment that reminds us that Americans are capable of coming together and doing great things, MAGA remains enthusiastic about where Trump is taking the country while many Americans seem to have become numb from the constant barrage of truly horrible things this administration does and is perfectly fine with.

Trump always has an excuse. Then, he relies that something new will come along to knock the most recent outrage off of the radar screen: The Epstein files, Minneapolis, the attack on Venezuela, war in Iran. And it goes on and on. When it comes to the Iranian girls who were killed in their school, the one safe place that should have existed for them, the Trump administration will hide behind “we’re investigating” and hope everyone will forget and move on. Like always, Donald Trump counts on “luck” to help him avoid consequences.

We need the kind of national courage that took us from Selma to the Voting Rights Act in the space of five months. It’s difficult in a sense because there are so many different outrages that it’s hard for people who love democracy to pick one to coalesce around. They all deserve our attention.

But we can all condemn an attack on a school—and a president who lies about his responsibility for it. In fact, we have to, if we don’t want to become a country that kills people at will. What happened in Iran should terrify Americans because of what it means if we don’t face it. And that is especially true as the administration warehouses immigrants in this country and we hear stories of people dying in those places from lack of medical care and even homicide. There is great danger in moments like this, and that is precisely why we need to make sure we don’t let this go.

I wrote to my senator and asked for her views. Predictably, I have not had a response yet, but I hope everyone will contact their Republican senators and let them know that they’re watching. What if we all joined forces on this one issue and they got bombarded by millions of their constituents demanding accountability for this. It’s not difficult to do. Let’s try it.

How do we get started? I wrote to my Senators this morning.

I’m sure I’ll get a response in a week or so, thanking me for sharing my views and saying nothing of substance, committing to do nothing of substance. But we know their offices keep track of communications on a topic. That’s how we ended up with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, because people like you and me wrote and called and demanded justice. We need to mount a sustained campaign here too, this time to find out what the truth is and to publicly acknowledge it, because we cannot become a country that kills school kids and lies about it.

So write and call your senators and representatives. But don’t stop there. Join up with others locally and online and inspire a movement, demand the truth, be a country that holds itself to a higher standard. It would be easy to brush this aside as something that happened to people far away, as a mistake during a war—which may well be the truth of the matter. But mistakes should have consequences when innocent people are killed, and consequences start with acknowledging the truth. Donald Trump has gotten away without doing that too many times, and this is where it leads. It has to stop. We have to stop it.

At times like these it can be easy to feel powerless. But we aren’t. We know that when we act, our elected officials have to respond. Just like Americans did in 1965, it’s our moment to come together in community and demand that our government do the right thing. Today, of all days, we should draw courage from our history and live up to the example that was set in Selma 61 years ago.

If Civil Discourse helps you think through moments like this—drawing on history, law, and a long memory from years inside the justice system—I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support makes it possible for me to keep doing the research and careful analysis these pieces require, and it helps sustain a community of people who believe that understanding what’s happening is the first step toward doing something about it.

We’re in this together,

Joyce