Pretty bad when your co-workers and constituents protest your corruption
Progressives to “block business as usual” to protest Manchin and Sinema’s “corrupt obstruction”
© Provided by SalonJoe Manchin; Kyrsten Sinema
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images
Progressive organizers in Arizona and West Virginia on Tuesday announced a joint protest targeting Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to demand they back ending the filibuster.
The activists announced a
"Sit-In to Save America" rally, march and nonviolent civil disobedience on May 23 in Tucson, Ariz., and Charleston, W.Va., to demand the two senators "stop their corrupt obstruction and end the filibuster so the majority can finally pass legislation to deal with the urgent crises that plague our nation."
Organizers in a statement accused Sinema and Manchin of "protecting an abused, outdated Senate rule" and the "profits of their corporate donors over our people, our democracy and our planet."
The organizers said the protest will "block business as usual" in "the great tradition of Dr. King, John Lewis, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, the suffragettes, the sit down strikers and other freedom struggles" in order "to dramatize this emergency and make it impossible to ignore."
Activists in the two states joined forces in response to the "continuing disgusting role of Sens. Sinema and Manchin and the filibuster rule that maintains racism, oppression and the exploitation of labor," Steven Valencia, the chair of Arizona Jobs for Justice and coordinating committee member of the Arizona Coalition to End the Filibuster, said in a statement to Salon. "Democracy is at stake and the moment is critical to change course for the benefit of working people and the planet. I will join friends in peaceful action and risk arrest to give voice to our demand of ending the filibuster."
Sharon Helan, president of the Eastern Panhandle Green Coalition and coordinating committee member of the West Virginia Poor People's Campaign, said that Martin Luther King Jr. "taught us the value of nonviolent disobedience to affect positive change."