Schumer Must Treat Voter Suppression as an Existential Threat and Abolish the Filibuster to Pass For the People Act

Today, as the Senate Rules Committee meets to debate and vote on the For the People Act, Ellen Sciales, Press Secretary for Sunrise Movement, released the following statement:

"Senate Republicans clearly don't give a shit about democracy. Republicans have posited from their actions and their words that they are more interested in silencing Americans and upholding white supremacist laws than working with Democrats to pass the For the People Act, which would dramatically stregnthen and heal our democracy. The truth is Republicans are terrified of making the vote more accessible because they know suppressing it is the only way they can continue to protect minority rule.

"Senator Schumer must see past the Republican BS and follow through on his promise to pass the For the People Act. In his own words, 'failure is not an option' and 'everything is on the table.' Unless he's lying to us, this means Senator Schumer must commit to abolishing the filibuster and pass the For the People Act swiftly and urgently. If Schumer doesn't act on this now, the opportunity may never come back when Black and brown Americans, young people, working people are turned away in droves from their polling places in 2022, 2024 and beyond. Democrats need to treat this like an existential threat to the future of governance and a functioning democracy.

"Senator Schumer has a choice to make - will he abolish the filibuster and pass the For the People Act, or will he be the reason thousands of working people in this country are muzzled by our broken system. As a native New Yorker, I know that if Senator Schumer fails to follow through for us, he has to answer to an angry constituency of people back at home and across the country."

Sunrise Movement has been a staunch advocate of passing the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which they see as the only way Democrats can relinquish the corporate stranglehold on U.S. elections and put power back in the hands of the people.