 That was legendary civil rights activist Jesse Jackson at the age of 79 marching in the scorching heat with Parkinson's mind you to Senator Kirsten Sinema's office to demand that she stop supporting the filibuster. Now the point of this march was to march to Kirsten Sinema's office and stage a sit-in and that is exactly what Jesse Jackson did and he refused to leave once he got there and him along with 39 other people were actually arrested at Kirsten Sinema's office because of this so that is dedication right there taking a stand and you know refusing to back down regardless of what the consequences are and this is by far one of the most important issues right now because if the filibuster is not abolished then Democrats will not be able to enact voting rights laws such as the For the People Act and this is important because the Republican Party is effectively rigging future elections in their favor with these voter suppression laws and they don't have to do very much to retake the House in 2022. In fact with gerrymandering alone by redrawing district lines in their favor they can easily win back the House in 2022 but future elections will be perpetually rigged in their favor with these new restrictive laws and they are specifically targeting things that drove up the vote in 2020 so this is incredibly egregious we should be further consolidating democracy further expanding suffrage to more and more people but they're making it more difficult and people like Kirsten Sinema they're enabling that and she's going to claim that she's only representing her constituents in a purple state but that's not actually the case because a new poll from data for progress shows that 66% of Arizona voters support a primary challenger to Kirsten Sinema specifically because she refuses to stop supporting the filibuster and I need people to understand how serious this issue is if voting rights are not enacted at the federal level after the Supreme Court has repeatedly gutted the actual voting rights act that we had before if we don't get the for the people act then everything that we want is off the table if the GOP is able to cling to power by cheating medicare for all not even possible green new deal not possible student cancellation not possible all of this is off the table if the GOP clings to power because they're not going to push forward so if we even want a chance of getting anything that the left wants codified into law we have to fight to protect democracy because the GOP is on a rampage against democracy and if you think that I'm being hyperbolic well the math has been done the numbers have been crunched and the laws that the GOP enacted will make it very easy for them to retake control of the states that they lost in 2020 so as political reports after georgia republicans passed a restrictive voting law in march democrats here began doing the math the state's new voter id requirement for mail-in ballots could affect the more than 270 000 georgians lacking identification the provision cutting the number of ballot drop boxes could affect hundreds of thousands of voters who cast absentee ballots that way in 2020 and that's just in the populace atlanta suburbs alone it didn't take long before the implications became clear to party officials and voting rights activists in a state that joe biden carried by fewer than 12 000 votes last year the new law stood to wipe out many of the party's hard fought gains and put them at a decisive disadvantage democrats in other states where similarly restrictive voting laws have passed are coming to the same conclusion interviews with more than three dozen democratic elected officials party operatives and voting rights activists across the country reveal growing concern bordering on alarm about the potential impact in 2022 of the raft of new laws passed by republican legislatures particularly in some of the nation's most competitive battleground states and really the title of the article sums the situation up it's a quote it says we're fucked and we are if the for the people act is not passed before 2022 we are fucked because the gop in authoritarian party who has some members explicitly calling for a coup is going to easily retake control of congress and once they take control again it's too late the window of opportunity to pass the for the people act is gone and then they will continue to rewrite the rules in their favor they've redrawn district lines so for the next 10 years they have an easy path to victory and even if it weren't the case that they were rewriting the rules in their favor to make them more electorally successful increase the likelihood that they're electorally successful even if the playing field were level there's still a lot of issues with our democracy we need a proportional representation system we need to abolish the electoral college that's still disproportionately advantaged as republicans and on top of that even if we got rid of all of that there's still issues the supreme court has already struck down the voting rights legislation that was already on the books right they've gutted it numerous times so they can gut further provisions so the deck continues to get stacked and stacked and stacked against us and the for the people act is the one piece of legislation that democrats are pushing that will help keep our heads above water but if they don't pass this because the filibuster does not get abolished because of people like here since cinema then we're going to be in a very bad situation for a very long time in this country now the problem is that the democrats who aren't just outright directly enabling the GOP like here since cinema and joe mansion aren't strong enough to actually effectively wage a campaign against republicans to his credit joe biden has i think accurately characterized the situation as an attack and an assault on democracy and he's correct about that but he's not doing enough to apply pressure to people in his own party who are blocking progress and the issue is that it seems like privately he's already basically admitted defeat so the new york times explains in private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders white house officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to out organize voter suppression according to multiple people familiar with the conversations so that's where we're at joe biden the president who has his bully pulpit rather than doing more privately he's basically saying look it's not going to get done so we might as well just try to out organize the voter suppression which is an effort that is not going to be successful now the people who were advisors to biden who were on the call that was referenced here they claim oh well you know he's not saying that we should try to out organize voter suppression he just said that that's one of the many tactics but it doesn't matter it's a distinction without a difference difference if he actually doesn't get this accomplished because if you allow people in your party like kirsten sinema and joe mentioned to continue to uphold the filibuster with joe biden which joe biden himself supports by the way you're not going to get the for the people act passed and then you will be shut out of power come 2022 come 2024 so the situation is absolutely absolutely dire and i applaud people like jesse jackson who understands the gravity of the situation if we lose our ability to actually make power changes in the country because our system is so skewed in favor of republicans then any progressive legislation that we want is not going to have a chance of passing so long as they control power it's not like it's easy to get these things passed it's seemingly impossible with democrats in power obviously that's why we're talking about the for the people act because they can't even agree on voter voting rights legislation because people in their own party are against it but things get a lot worse but at this moment we still have our heads above water so long as we can pass the for the people act will be a little bit better off but if that doesn't happen if people like kirsten sinema win then it's going to be too late