Call to action to pass John Lewis Voting Rights Act issued at Portage NAACP breakfast

The Portage County NAACP issued a call to action to focus on securing the right to vote and have those votes counted for all at its Saturday prayer breakfast prior to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Portage County NAACP President Geraldine Hayes-Nelson asked attendees to the virtual event to help pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would protect voting rights in the face of Republican efforts in Ohio and many other states to make it more difficult to vote.

“Our call to action today is nothing more important than the right to vote," she said. "Call your senators; call your state representatives. Let's fight forward and protect our democracy and our right to vote.”

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The Rev. Dennis Ritchey, pastor at the Winfield Church of God in Christ in Ravenna, encouraged attendees at the virtual prayer Breakfast to continue to strive for equality and fight complacency and hopelessness.

“Listen, friends, gravity constantly pulls on you,” he said. “If you were just to give in to what comes naturally, you will do nothing. And you will go nowhere. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ’Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’ My brothers and sisters, no one gets a free ride. No one gets a hall pass from challenges in this life. If someone's making it, they are on top because they are fighting forward.”

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Some of the features of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act include a minimum of 15 days of early voting, the opportunity to mail-in ballots and making election day a national holiday, he said.

Sen. Sherrod Brown also spoke of the importance of fighting for voters’ rights.

Despite progress on COVID-19, improving pay for workers and other areas, voting rights are “under assault with a ferocity that we have not seen since Dr. King and John Lewis marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge” where civil rights activists were attacked by state and local authorities on their march to Montgomery Alabama on March 7, 1965.

“We can't allow these politicians and state legislatures to dismantle the democracy that Dr. King and so many others risked their lives to make real for everyone,” he said, adding that he would like to see the “arcane” filibuster ended, as well, to enable passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Congressman Tim Ryan agreed it’s time for action on voting rights — “the great equalizer that we have in the United States of America” — and put an end to gerrymandering and other forces that strip the influence of the working class.

“We need to prevent the blocking of people having access to the ballot box,” said Ryan. “We need to prevent the gerrymandering that's happening in places like Ohio. We need to get the money out of politics that has such a corrosive effect on the decisions that are being made every single day, more tilted towards the top 1%, more tilted towards corporations and less tilted toward workers.”

Locally, the future looks bright for the Portage County NAACP, according to Hayes-Nelson, because of the activity of students like those at Windham High School and middle school, several of whom participated in the prayer breakfast

“Those young people were awesome,” she said. “You see the quality of the youth that we have. So it gives us hope, it gives me hope as I listen to a seventh-grader, an eighth-grader, a 10th-grader. The students at Windham, they are fighting forward.”

She also said the youth at the Kent United Church of Christ, where the Portage County NAACP recently established an office, have been supportive of the organization.

Among several students from Windham who spoke and performed during the prayer breakfast was 11th-grader Za’Nya Henderson, president of the school’s NAACP youth chapter which social studies teacher Stephanie Smith advises. Henderson connected King’s “I Have a Dream” speech with her own dreams.

“Dr. King had a dream, a dream that children would live in a world where they would be treated as equals and not judged because of their differences,” she said. “Within these next few years, I hope that we're able to spread information about the NAACP all throughout Portage County. I have hope that we will be able to open the minds of those who keep theirs closed to anything new. In addition to my dreams for my town and my group, I have dreams for my family. I have a dream that one day my mother and sisters will be able to prosper in all the ways they never thought they could. I dream of nothing but love happiness and peace for them.”

Do you have a business or healthcare story you'd like to share? Reporter Bob Gaetjens can be reached at 330-541-9440, bgaetjens@recordpub.com and @bobgaetjens_rc.

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Portage NAACP issues call to pass John Lewis Voting Rights Act