Assistant Legal professional Common Kristen Clarke Delivers Remarks at the Martin & Coretta King Unity Breakfast | OPA

Remarks as Prepared for Supply

It is a huge honor to be listed here in Selma these days marking 58 decades because Bloody Sunday and a privilege to depict the U.S. Office of Justice. I want to identify the distinguished clergy, elected officials, civil legal rights leaders, residents of Alabama and the foot soldiers right here now. I also want to accept Martin Luther King III, who is so proudly carrying his father’s torch.

Fifty eight several years.

Fifty eight years since Alabama condition troopers brutally conquer nonviolent marchers – and yet we continue to be part of together right here just about every yr.

There is both of those profound hope and profound sadness in that.

Fifty eight years – and while we have arrive so much, we however have so considerably more to go.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into legislation in immediate response to Bloody Sunday, nevertheless now we facial area some of the most important threats to our democracy in American background.

The Bloody Sunday march was by itself spurred by the beating and murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by Alabama condition troopers, nonetheless police violence continues to be with us.

White supremacy and racially inspired dislike crimes are alive and perfectly. 

Voting discrimination and voter suppression are rampant. 

The situations in our jails and prisons are inhumane.

But as Dr. King reported when people Selma marchers finally produced it to Montgomery, we can uncover strength in our struggles, hope in our darkest moments.

To quotation Dr. King:  “Selma, Alabama, became a shining instant in the conscience of person. If the worst in American everyday living lurked in its dim streets, the most effective of American instincts arose passionately from throughout the nation to prevail over it.”

The Civil Rights Division at the Justice Division is pushed by that exact belief.

We are dedicated to defending the civil rights of all people today in our nation. 

We are working with our federal civil legal rights rules to hold accountable the defendant who killed 10 Black men and women at the Tops grocery retailer in Buffalo, New York. 

We secured convictions towards all three gentlemen accountable for the racially-inspired killing of Ahmaud Arbery. We are holding legislation enforcement officers accountable when they violate civil and constitutional legal rights, together with Derek Chauvin and the three other officers who failed to intervene in the killing of George Floyd. 

We secured indictments versus the four officers tied to the demise of Breonna Taylor.

We are confronting voter suppression and have filed lawsuits from Ga to Texas to Arizona. 

We are combating for environmental justice suitable below in Alabama, the place Black folks in Lowndes County lack access to fundamental sanitation and are exposed to uncooked sewage.

We are investigating law enforcement departments from Louisville to Minneapolis, Phoenix to Louisiana. 

We are taking on financial institutions that interact in contemporary-working day redlining.

We do this perform because we owe a incredible financial debt to John Lewis and the Freedom Marchers who lose blood and place their bodies on the line to ensure that we all would have the ideal to vote.

We just take this time in Selma to don’t forget that the march is not over – substantially work continues to be to be carried out to satisfy the elementary ideals upon which this state was launched and upon which democracy is centered.

Know that this Division of Justice will continue to keep fighting for you, all of you.

Thank you.