I have a dream… that American voters will revive US democracy this November

The t housands who rallied at the Lincoln Memorial last month to launch a vital mobilisation to defend American voting rights modelled Martin Luther King Jnr’s aspiration for America. They have agency to once again help ‘make real the promise of democracy’.

Micheline Tusenius, a dual citizen of South Africa and the US, is a writer living in Washington, DC.

On 28 August 2026, a day of blistering heat, several thousand democracy- and justice-loving Americans gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. They then strode to the nearby Martin Luther King Jnr Memorial to honour the original March on Washington that took place 63 years ago to the day.

It was at this march that Dr Martin Luther King Jnr had delivered his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech to 250,000 people.

The backdrop to the 1963 “Jobs and Freedom” March on Washington was segregation, racial inequality and ongoing harsh denial of full political and economic rights for black Americans a century after the end of slavery.

King described parts of the US as “sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression” and declared that “this sweltering summer of the negroes’ legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality”.

King also spoke of the “fierce urgency of now” and how this was “no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of gradualism”.

Civic activism and political organisation before and after the 1963 March culminated in the passage into law of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

These acts heralded the legal end to segregationist Jim Crow practices, recognised black Americans’ full equality before the law and accorded them full voting rights in American democracy. They didn’t, however, address black Americans’ dissatisfaction with their broad economic conditions.

The focus for the 28 August 2026 March on Washington was “Defend the Vote”. The Reverend Al Sharpton and his National Action Network co-organised this year’s march with Martin Luther King III and his Drum Major Institute, together with other civil and labour rights groups.

“Defend the Vote” became the rallying cry due to attempts of the Trump administration, the conservative-majority US Supreme Court and Republican-led states to suppress the vote.

The White House’s disenfranchising efforts include rigging or gerrymandering the boundaries of voting districts, denying participation, stiffening voter ID requirements, limiting mail-in ballots, restricting early voting and reducing the number of polling sites.

The Trump administration is also trying to interfere with the management of elections, a process that the US constitution expressly assigns to states, not the federal government.

Before the march, Sharpton stressed that this year’s march was not a commemoration of the 1963 march, but a call to further action: “The marches in 1963 and now are showing the problem, then you go and organise around the problem. This is not just an event, it’s the kick-off to a summer and fall of organising around the midterm elections.”