FOG BLOG U.S. LOG: MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY MARKED BY MARCHES ON WASHINGTON:

Martin Luther King Jr.’s family marches in D.C. for Senate action on voting rights bill.....March organizers are calling on the Senate to end the filibuster to allow for a vote on voting rights legislation......Members of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family demanded Monday that the Senate scrap the filibuster and pass voting rights legislation as they led a D.C. march on the holiday honoring the civil rights icon.

King’s son, Martin Luther King III, his wife Arndrea Waters King and their 13-year-old daughter, Yolanda Renee King, joined several hundred other activists and residents in a frigid walk across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. The bridge, they said, symbolized President Biden’s and Congress’s support for the recently approved $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.“To the president and United States senators, you were successful with infrastructure, which is a great thing,” King III told the crowd gathered outside Nationals Park before they headed over the bridge. “But you need to use the same energy to ensure all Americans have an unencumbered right to vote.”

As a wintry breeze blew, D.C. resident Lydia Davis said she and a friend marched to honor King and advocate for access to the ballot box, as well as other rights he fought for.

“I’m 64, and all the issues we’re marching for are the same things,” said Davis, a D.C. schools substitute teacher. “I’m marching so my daughter doesn’t have to march 10 years from now.”

The group continued as part of the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Walk on its two-mile route along Martin Luther King Avenue SE. They then were scheduled to attend a news conference at Union Station with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other House members to call on the Senate to avoid a filibuster and pass the voting rights bill Tuesday.

“From the Civil War to the Jim Crow era, the filibuster has blocked popular bills to stop lynching, end poll taxes, and fight workplace discrimination,” organizers said on their website. “Now it’s being used to block voting rights. The weaponization of the filibuster is racism cloaked in procedure and it must go.”

The King family also participated with hundreds of others in a march Saturday in Phoenix, according to media reports.