Obama, giving a
eulogy at the emotional funeral service in Atlanta of civil rights leader John
Lewis on Thursday night, July 30, blasted alleged Republican attempts to
suppress the minority vote and Trump's repeated attacks on mail-in voting less
than 100 days ahead of the November elections.
Criticizing
Republican president Trump, who used troops to clear protesters outside the
White House and sent federal agents to put down demonstrations in Portland,
Oregon, Obama said;
"Today we
witness with our own eyes, police officers kneeling on the necks of Black
Americans,"
"We can witness
our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against
peaceful demonstrators," the former president said.
"Even as we sit
here, there are those in power who are doing their darndest to discourage
people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and
students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical
precision, even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election
that's going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don't get sick,"
he said.
"These actions
threaten US democracy.
Paying tribute to
Lewis, a 17-term Democratic congressman from Georgia, who died on July 17 at
the age of 80, Obama said the congressman's fight for African-Americans' civil
rights had paved the way for him to become the first Black president of the US.
Lewis did "everything he could to preserve this democracy and as long as we have breath in our bodies, we have to continue his cause", Obama said.
"As long as
young people are protesting in the streets hoping real change takes hold, I'm
hopeful," he said.
"But we can't
casually abandon them at the ballot box. Not when few elections have been as
urgent on so many levels as this one."
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