Madeleine Dean: “We are in a dark time, but this is no time to retreat or to despair because we have been in dark times in this country…”

“We are in a dark time, but this is no time to retreat or to despair because we have been in dark times in this country before. This past weekend, along with dozens of my colleagues and hundreds of others, I had the opportunity, the chance, to travel to Selma, Alabama, to recall and reflect on the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, where courageous Americans, many of them just children, protested for the right to vote. In his ``Letter from Birmingham Jail,'' Martin Luther King teaches us of the danger of indifference and shallow understanding, and yet he teaches us of the power of collective action. King warned us not just of the ``hateful words and actions of the bad people,'' but also ``the appalling silence of the good people.'' This must not be a time of shallow understanding, not a time for lukewarm acceptance. I call out the appalling silence of so many of my colleagues in the face of what we will vote on today, in the face of what we have seen from this administration: cuts to veterans, cuts to families, and a threat to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I first crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge back in 2019 with our late colleague, Congressman John Lewis. He told us then and is telling us now that when we see something that is not right, not fair, not just, we have to speak up. We have to say something. Why else would we be here? We have to do something. We have to act. Let us recommit ourselves to the cause of justice.…”