Politicians Come to Selma Every Year to Commemorate the Civil Rights Struggle, But Nothing Changes
Democrats use Selma, Alabama as a political prop and ignore the city’s current struggles. Residents told Jacobin that they need real help, not just annual photo ops with Oprah and Joe Biden.
Joe Biden walks across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama locked arm-in-arm with John Lewis and Terri Sewell, 2013. (Robert Hudson / Selma Times Journal)
The annual pilgrimage to Selma grows bigger each year.
For top Democrats, it’s an opportunity to take a victory lap in a symbolic capital of the Civil Rights Movement and pander to key African-American voters during campaign season.
Two days before Super Tuesday, nearly every presidential candidate on the ticket — from Joe Biden to Mike Bloomberg — converged on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the fifty-fifth anniversary of Bloody Sunday. The event attracted such a crush of onlookers that the national politicians couldn’t walk arm-in-arm per usual; settling instead for a single file stroll through the gathered masses.
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